Welcome to the first Economic Liberties newsletter of 2025! While the pace of news has kept us quite busy over the past few months, we’re looking forward to reestablishing a regular cadence to bring you timely, in-depth updates on the issues that matter most to our organization and the anti-monopoly movement. 

Given this is our first edition of the year, fair warning that it’s going to be a bit more comprehensive than usual. Going forward, you can expect this newsletter to arrive on a bi-monthly basis.  If you want to read quicker, week-to-week updates on what we’re tracking, be sure to follow our Substack, The Economic Populist, where we’re breaking down one big policy issue each week along with recapping the news as it happens on our Weekly Rewind. 

The Trump administration’s chaotic, erratic and unsteady policymaking is increasing the risk of a recession or, in a worst case scenario, an economic crisis. Trump announced a 90-day pause on the bulk of his Liberation Day “reciprocal” tariffs on Tuesday afternoon. The surprise decision resulted in a wave of relief across Wall Street, sending the stock market surging—and inviting accusations that Trump manipulated the market to enrich insiders and the capital class broadly. The next day the market started to decline again as it tried to make sense of what tariffs remained. This type of policy chaos is not sustainable for the stability of the economy. Nor is it a way to fix our current broken trade system.  

In the run up to this announcement and after, our Rethink Trade’s Lori Wallach has been explaining in the media — with pieces in The American Prospect and Project Syndicate — how tariffs can be best used and the problems with the approach being taken by the Trump administration. What we need is a strategic tariff program aimed at protecting key sectors and broad-based tariffs on large export-driven countries that employ unfair practices such as China, Taiwan, and Germany, with the goal of restoring America’s ability to produce critical products necessary for the health, safety, and security of American families. Also, industrial policy! 

However, the Trump tariffs plan have offered the opposite of a steady and predictable policy climate. On top of all this, DOGE’s decimation of regulators has hollowed out government capacity to respond to this brewing economic crisis — a crisis that Trump both created and is perpetuating. 

Our view at Economic Liberties is that this moment demands a strong response from Congress that meets the challenge and scale of the potential crisis that Trump has unleashed. We’re also pushing the administration to maximize transparency as it negotiates with countries to ensure that they’re not cutting deals at the expense of the American people. You can learn more about our thinking here in the latest issue of The Economic Populist.

Attempted Illegal Firing of FTC Commissioners Jeopardizes Critical Work. In an unprecedented act of political interference, the Trump White House attempted last month to illegally fire Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelley Slaughter, the Democratic minority commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission. As Bedoya told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, the attempted firings are effectively “corporate pardons” that will throw the FTC’s work into limbo—and allow corporate abuses to continue. Bedoya and Slaughter have sued to keep their jobs, but the fight goes beyond the courtroom. Economic Liberties and partners in the antimonopoly movement came out strong to defend the commissioners and the independence of the FTC, and to shed light on the dangerous consequences of this move. The commissioners have seen overwhelming public support— from members of Congress, to rideshare drivers, to healthcare professionals and pharmacists who attended a roundtable organized by our sister organization, Fight Corporate Monopolies. In late March, Bedoya spoke before a 30,000+ crowd at a Denver rally staged by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As one journalist at the rally noted, it was “hard to get a good shot of this Denver rally’s size, but it’s got to be a record crowd to hear an FTC commissioner."

Zuckerberg’s Moment of Reckoning May Finally Be Here. Meta (formerly Facebook) is heading to trial in a D.C. courtroom next week in the Federal Trade Commission’s monopoly lawsuit against the social media giant. The FTC’s case—originally filed by the first Trump administration in 2020 and continued by the Biden enforcers—centers on Meta’s anticompetitive acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. With an April 14 trial date rapidly approaching, Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who will take the witness stand) are starting to sweat. That’s why you’ve seen reports that Zuckerberg has been visiting the White House and even buying a $23 million mansion in D.C. as he continues his aggressive lobbying campaign to urge President Trump to settle and avoid court. This inside game is a classic tactic for monopolists, but it’s unclear how effective it will be in deterring a case against one of the most harmful, aggressive, and universally-hated modern monopolies. Economic Liberties will be back in the courtroom providing updates from Big Tech on Trial (check out the new curtain raiser piece) and once again running a communications war room with partners. Make sure you’re subscribed to Big Tech on Trial and stay tuned for more updates from us as this oligarch finally goes to court. 

DOJ On Track to Break Up Google. The landmark cases against Google is moving forward, underscoring that the antitrust agenda against Big Tech continues. In its final remedies brief filed last month in the Biden-Harris administration’s case against Google’s search monopoly, the Trump DOJ affirmed its commitment to breaking up Google with a Chrome divestiture and potential Android divestiture, moves that would release internet search, advertising, and artificial intelligence from Google’s monopoly grip. This echoes the remedy framework we published in 2024. But as our own Morgan Harper said in testimony at a Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on Big Fixes for Big Tech last week, "momentum in the courts is no reason for Congress to slow down" on structural solutions to Big Tech’s monopoly power. At the hearing, there was clear agreement on the harms of Big Tech and growing consensus from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on the need to break up the power of monopolies like Google. Morgan’s full testimony is worth a read. 

States Move to Stop Surveillance Pricing. The latest dystopian scheme from companies looking to make ever more money at the expense of their customers is “surveillance pricing,” where companies leverage personalized data to determine pricing (as well as wages, in the case of gig work platforms) on an individual level. In February, Economic Liberties released a joint report detailing how companies use rent-setting software and wage analytics to form “digitally-coordinated cartels,” harming consumers and workers. We’ve been proud to work with state lawmakers in California, Colorado, and Illinois on pioneering legislation to combat this threat. 

More on the fight for fair pricing: States continue to rapidly take up bills that address other threats to fair pricing. Economic Liberties is proud to support active legislation in 8 states to ban junk fees, as well as bills in  19 states and 7 cities to ban algorithm-driven “rent-fixing” collusion between landlords. Stay tuned for more on this front from our State & Local team.

Over 75,000 Americans Join Together To Break Up Big Medicine. In February, we launched Break Up Big Medicine with a feature on our fast-growing Substack, The Economic Populist, and a virtual event with Representative Jake Auchincloss, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, and Oregon State Representative Ben Bowman. Our new initiative brings together patients, doctors, pharmacists, business owners, and healthcare workers to demand that policymakers in federal and state governments take action to end the structural conflicts of interest at the heart of the healthcare industry. In two short months, 76,600 Americans have taken action and over 30,000 have joined our email listserv. There is growing bipartisan scrutiny into healthcare giants, with a suite of structural separation bills and investigations into pharmacy benefit managers and healthcare conglomerates like UnitedHealth Group. 

As part of this effort, we released original research showing that at least 326 U.S. pharmacies closed between Dec. 19, 2024, when Elon Musk convinced Congress to abandon bipartisan, bicameral pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) reforms as part of a stopgap spending bill, and Feb. 28, 2025. The vast majority of these closures – 237, or nearly 73% – were independent pharmacies. That research was referenced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on the Senate floor in March, and featured in Fast Company, Morning Brew, and other outlets. Rep. Pat Ryan also recently released findings from an investigation into UnitedHealth Group just last week. If you haven’t yet done so, check out the campaign website, and this great write-up from healthcare policy reporter pioneer Marty Schladen. We’ll be consistently engaging with and mobilizing this growing coalition in the coming months to drive change. 

Efforts to Rein in Monopoly Utilities Ignites the States as Concerns Grow Over the High Cost of Energy Bills. After an extraordinarily cold winter and a fresh round of sticker shock, frustration with electrical utilities reached a boiling point in states ranging from New York to Florida. New polling from Groundwork Collaborative shows that utility bills are the number two cost of living concern identified by Americans, after grocery prices. After Senior Fellow for Utilities Mark Ellis laid out in a January whitepaper how legislators can rein in demonstrably-excessive investor payouts to deliver ratepayer savings, legislators in New York, Minnesota and Connecticut have introduced versions of his proposal. Mark testified in support of the bills in Connecticut and Minnesota, and the whitepaper has appeared in Gothamist, the Los Angeles Times, and a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed. (It also ruffled the feathers of professional utility financial analysts and and state utilities regulators—watch here at 29 minutes.) Additionally, Economic Liberties put out a toolkit for state lawmakers with an extensive menu of policy tools to rein in investor-owned utility political power and deliver savings, which we highlighted at a virtual workshop with Arizona State Senator Priya Sundareshan.

Holding the DOJ Accountable for Waiving Through Harmful Capital One-Discover Merger. Following a report that the DOJ Antitrust Division would decline to challenge Capital One’s proposed $35 billion acquisition of Discover Financial Services, Economic Liberties sent a letter to the DOJ, as well as the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, urging them to block the merger under federal antitrust and banking statutes. As the letter made clear, the merger would create the sixth largest bank by assets and the largest credit card lender to people with non-prime credit scores—constituting more than 30 percent of the outstanding loans to these borrowers—as well as vertically integrating Capital One’s banking business with Discover’s credit and debit networks, which would harm merchants. 

QUICK HITS

• Economic populists in Congress: In recent weeks, efforts have emerged in Congress to take on corporate monopolies. Reps. Chris Deluzio, Pat Ryan, and Greg Casar, Maggie Goodlander, and others gave a series of speeches at a Special Order Hour in the House a few weeks ago urging their colleagues to “wake the hell up,” and embrace economic patriotism and populism. And just this week, a group of Congressmembers including Reps. Deluzio, Jayapal, Ryan, Craig, and others launched the Monopoly Busters Caucus, which seeks to unite MoCs “to fight corporate greed and promote a pro-worker, pro-consumer, and pro-small business economic agenda.”
• Abundance vs Antimonopoly is a false choice: Sr. Advisor Hannah Garden-Monheit has an op-ed in Politico Magazine highlighting the fundamental compatibility of the abundance and anti-monopoly movements.
• Amicus briefs in Google, noncompetes cases: Economic Liberties filed amicus briefs supporting Epic Games in its civil antitrust case against Google—emphasizing the need for the court to uphold robust remedies that counter Google’s abuse of its monopoly power in the Android app distribution market—and supporting the FTC’s rule to ban noncompete agreements as it faces industry legal challenges. 
• Antitrust reform coming to California: The California Law Revision Commission has approved initial recommendations to the state legislature for reforming California’s antiquated antitrust law, including recommendations that state lawmakers adopt a law against illegal monopolization and a more flexible merger standard, mirroring initial recommendations set forth in a January 2023 Letter to the Commission sent by Economic Liberties.
• Trump FTC-DOJ keep 2023 merger guidelines: Trump’s antitrust enforcers announced in Feburary that they would continue to use the updated 2023 Merger Guidelines—the policy statement that lays out how antitrust enforcers interpret the law to decide which mergers to challenge—that were formulated under former FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter. 
• New merger form goes into effect: As of February, firms attempting to merge must submit an updated filing form to antitrust agencies finalized by the Biden-era FTC and DOJ last October. The update will streamline and modernize the merger review process, including to catch under-the-radar private equity roll-ups.
• Kroger, Albertsons CEOs resign after merger blocked: Following the FTC’s successful challenge last fall to the Kroger-Albertsons grocery mega merger, the CEOs of both merging parties have resigned (after exchanging lawsuits over what Albertsons saw as Kroger’s inadequate effort to convince the court that the merger did not illegally reduce competition).
• Economic Liberties Welcomes New Senior Fellows and Advisors: In February, Economic Liberties welcomed five new Senior Fellows and Advisors with deep experience serving at the White House, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division: Hannah Garden-Monheit, Sally Hubbard, Blake Narendra, Catherine Simonsen, and Katherine Van Dyck.

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