Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we look at last week’s very different enforcement actions in Brussels and Washington on Google antitrust. And how Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook get you to subsidize their enormous AI electricity bills.

As Brussels and Washington Take on Google, Profiles in Courage and Confusion

European Commission VP Teresa Ribera

Last Friday’s news [[link removed]] that the European Commission plans to fine Google $3.5 billion for abuse of its dominance of online advertising markets may go down as one of the more important actions in the history of antimonopoly. Not because of the fine itself; such penalties rarely change behavior. Rather it was because of the Commission’s clear accompanying threat to break up Google. More important yet was the timing — immediately after President Trump personally threatened Europe if it dared “attack our incredible American Tech Companies.”

European Commission President Von der Leyen could still lose her nerve for reasons geopolitical or homegrown. But under the prodding of Vice President Teresa Ribera, her team appears to be stumbling towards making the EC a true regulatory power. In recent years, Europe’s Parliament has greatly strengthened its laws, most dramatically with the Digital Services Act. Now the Commission is putting the new rules to the test, which is why Google and the other platform monopolists have enlisted Trump in their fight against the EC. Thus far, the Commission has demonstrated an ability to wield its big new stick while speaking softly or not at all [[link removed]], in ways that allowed Trump to quietly fall back from threats of trade war to a relatively harmless Section 301 complaint. See our statement here [[link removed]].

The other reason the EC’s action was so important is because it came immediately after Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling on how to remedy Google’s monopolization of search in the U.S. Mehta’s action was also historical in nature, albeit on account of its exceptionally incoherent reasoning. In August 2024 Mehta agreed with the Department of Justice and 38 states attorney general that Google had broken the law by perpetuating its search monopoly through nefarious means, including by bribing Apple to the tune of billions of dollars annually not to exchange rival search tools. Then last week he rejected almost all the government demands on how to fix the problem.

Judge Mehta had a legal duty to craft a remedy to break Google’s existing monopoly in search, but he failed to do that. Headlines focused on Mehta’s decision to not order Google to spin off its Chrome browser and the Android operating system. More shocking, however, was his failure to order Google to stop paying rivals such as Apple billions of dollars for exclusive installation of its search applications. Then there was Mehta’s reasoning. Despite the fact Google is one of the three corporations that dominate AI, Mehta justified his decision by reasoning that AI market “forces” would likely soon break the corporation’s dominance of search. For more see our statement [[link removed]], and former AAG Jonathan Kanter’s powerful op-ed [[link removed]].

There are many lessons from last week’s events. We believe three stand out:

Pro-monopoly ideology continues to play a big role in antitrust. For more than 15 years, our team at Open Markets has argued that key to renewing U.S. antimonopoly law was to break the grip of the libertarian consumer welfare ideology on enforcers and the judiciary. Judge Mehta’s decision is a perfect example of how nonsensical ideas continue to inform the thinking of federal judges and prevent them from understanding how concentrated political economic power threatens the foundations of our democracy and personal liberty.

Trump appears to have been bluffing in his threats against Europe. Like most bullies, President Trump will push until his would-be victim pushes back, then he’ll move to some easier mark. It’s not only Europeans who should keep forever in mind that the best way to deal with Trump is not to cower and retreat. So too liberals and democrats in America.

We are fighting a world war for democracy. The only way to protect democracy against concentrated power is for free peoples around the world to support one another. In antitrust this has been true since the 1940s, which is why we at OMI established an office in Europe. But the EC’s courage last week does not mean Americans should now spend our days hectoring the Europeans to work yet harder. Our job is to take inspiration from EC actions to break the power of our own oligarchs and autocrats, in part by disrupting any further efforts by the administration and Republicans in Congress to attack our democratic allies in Europe.

How Big Tech’s AI Dreams are Driving Your Electricity Bills Through the Roof

George Colville

Americans are learning the AI boom comes with many costs. Not only do the world’s largest corporations appropriate people’s and businesses’ data without payment, but they also drive up the prices of everything from semiconductors to prime industrial real estate, then force taxpayers to subsidize their sprees. Now another bill has come due – for electricity to power AI.

This summer has seen energy bills soar by up to 35% [[link removed]] in parts of the U.S. From Ohio, to Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, where Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others are building data centers at a record rate, average monthly bills have already jumped [[link removed]] by up to $27. And this is just the beginning.

The AI-driven data center buildout is projected to push U.S. energy demand growth from a low and steady 0.41% [[link removed]] annual rate between 2000 and 2023 to 2.4% per year [[link removed]] from 2025. Over a decade, that represents a 26.7% total increase compared with the 4.2% expected under pre-AI conditions. Accordingly, energy utilities and grid operators are investing in new infrastructure – much of it based on fossil fuels – that can only be paid for by higher energy prices. One recent study found [[link removed]] that residential ratepayers served by PJM, the energy utility for the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, could see their bills increase by between 30% and 60% by 2030.

To put the data center boom into perspective, consider Mark Zuckerberg’s latest project [[link removed]]: a Manhattan-sized complex in Louisiana that will require 5GW of energy. That equates to the electricity consumption of 3.75 million homes, or roughly the residential power demand of the entire Chicago metro area. It is also more than any single power plant in the U.S. can produce, with the exception of the Grand Coulee Dam.

Energy regulators have long recognized that different customers impose different cost burdens on energy infrastructure. In what is known as the cost causation principle, users have historically been broken into different classes, each of which is charged a price per unit broadly representing the cost it imposes on the grid.

Most utilities, for instance, require industrial scale users to pay for the initial cost of connecting their facility to the grid. They then, however, charge these industrial facilities less per unit of energy than households pay, because it costs less to serve a single industrial plant with a peak demand of 1 MW than it does to serve 2,000 homes with a collective peak demand of 1 MW.

This history and its underlying principles imply the costs of building the energy infrastructure required by data centers should be borne by those causing them. This means the new plants and grid infrastructure catering to AI energy demand should be paid for by those making this investment necessary: the AI industry.

Increasingly, however, the corporations dominating data center development have used their concentrated financial and political power to push these costs onto the bills of individual households, using them and other industries to subsidize their enormous energy appetite.

One way they are doing so is by misleadingly claiming that data centers will deliver major employment [[link removed]] and economic benefits [[link removed]] to local communities, which makes local authorities fear [[link removed]] losing out to neighboring towns and states. The corporations that dominate AI are also adept at stoking race-to-the-bottom thinking among the utilities and grid operators themselves, by making the case the AI boom represents a once-a-lifetime opportunity to gain new energy-intensive customers.

The ultimate result is to incentize the utilities to exploit their own monopoly power over their captive residential and commercial customers, raising prices to subsidize lower-price offers to potential data center investors deciding between competing energy providers. As a recent report [[link removed]] demonstrates, utility companies are offering data center operators favorable – even below-cost – rates, either as a group or as tailored special contracts. In parallel, some utility regulators are being undermined by state legislatures. In Mississippi [[link removed]], for instance, legislators recently stripped their regulator of any authority to review contracts between utilities and data centers.

Making AI companies pay for the energy infrastructure they require is possible. Options include [[link removed]] directing public utility commissions to create a new rate classification for data centers, or requiring them to commit to fairly-priced long-term contracts and minimum contract payments. Ohio’s Public Utilities Commission is seeking to do this [[link removed]] but faces concerted lobbying [[link removed]] from Big Tech.

Energy markets and their regulators have a long history of fairly distributing the cost of infrastructure spending, making those responsible for higher costs pay their fair share. Tech giants are using their concentrated economic and political power to upend this tradition. Most recently, they have wooed President Trump into promising [[link removed]] to help them tap more easily into local and regional energy grids, in ways that would put them into competition with even more American households.

If they have their way, many citizens will be left unable to pay their bills and ordinary businesses may struggle to stay afloat.

Open Markets and Revolving Door Project Issue Report “Debunking the Abundance Agenda”

Open Markets Institute and the Revolving Door Project [[link removed]] released a joint report [[link removed]], “Debunking the Abundance Agenda,” taking aim at the vision of deregulation and subsidy-driven growth popularized by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their recent book Abundance. At a time when wealth disparities in the United States have reached historic levels, the report exposes how the Abundance platform sidesteps the root causes of inequality and enables the further consolidation of corporate power — undermining the very democratic and egalitarian values it claims to champion. “Behind the movement’s rhetoric about ‘building’ lies a dangerous deference to corporate power, deregulation, and trickle-down thinking,” said Brian Callaci, chief economist of the Open Markets Institute and one of the report’s co-authors. The coauthored report received coverage in Common Dreams [[link removed]] and Breakthrough Journal [[link removed]]. Read the report here [[link removed]].

Open Markets Fights the Platform Monopolists’ Threat to Free Speech, and Defends the Goals and Means of European Regulation

The Open Markets Institute submitted a letter [[link removed]] to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), urging them to recognize how Europe’s approach to regulating essential online communications platforms strengthens free speech, democracy, and the economy. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal introduced the Open Markets letter into the record at a contentious the House Judiciary Committee hearing on September 3, at which right-wing UK politician Nigel Farage testified. In its letter, Open Markets emphasized that the true threat to free speech comes not from democratic governments but from the handful of corporations — including Meta, Google, and X — that dominate global online communications. “These corporations are not neutral platforms,” the letter states. “They amplify some voices while silencing others, suppress independent journalism, and manipulate what billions of people read, see, and share — all with no accountability to the public.” Read the letter here [[link removed]].

Also this week, Open Markets’ Europe Program authored a letter urging the European Commission to stand firm against the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on the EU’s digital regulations. The letter called on the EU president von der Leyen to continue pursuing investigations under the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and EU antitrust law and consider additional measures in response to unprecedented U.S. interference, including use of the EU’s new Anti-Coercion Instrument. “This moment is critical for ensuring Europe’s ability to set and enforce democratic rules for the digital economy free from foreign pressure,” said Open Markets Europe director Max von Thun. Nearly 60 c [[link removed]]ivil society groups signed the letter, which was covered by POLITICO Europe and Tagesspiegel Background [[link removed]]. Read the letter here [[link removed]].

Open Markets Launches New Liberty & Power Newsletter

Open Markets last Friday launched a bimonthly newsletter called Liberty & Power [[link removed]] that will make the case that defenders of liberal democracy need a policy program and story that gets to the heart of the anger and frustration we all feel at the economic status quo and our fears for our democracy. In the newsletter, experts at OMI and key allies will explain how corporate power warps our news and information systems, stunts innovation in crucial industries, and chokes our access to the most basic necessities of life. They will also publish original analysis of ongoing debates about political economic philosophy, and on policy innovations in the US and around the world. The inaugural issue looked at Big Tech oligarch support for the “Abundance” campaign. Read our inaugural issue, on Substack, here [[link removed]]. Click here [[link removed]] to subscribe.

📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:

The Open Markets Institute Europe last week called on the European Commission shift decisive away from the outdated “consumer welfare” enforcement framework, in a 20-page recommendation. OMI’s submission also urges regulators to adopt clear structural presumptions to stop dominant firms from growing larger through takeovers and to resist calls to weaken enforcement under the guise of creating so-called European champions. “Europe’s markets are at a crossroads,” said OMI Europe director Max von Thun. “For too long, merger control has failed to prevent rising corporate concentration, leaving citizens, workers, and innovators at the mercy of powerful corporations and foreign tech giants.” Read the submission here [[link removed]].

Open Markets Institute’s reporter Austin Ahlman published an article in The American Prospect [[link removed]] on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is positioning himself as part of a new wave of populists. Ahlman noted that Platner’s campaign embraces an anti-corporate, anti-establishment message rooted in localist politics, framing the race as part of a broader backlash against today’s “new Gilded Age.”

Ahlman also wrote a piece for The Intercept [[link removed]] on Iowa state House representative J.D. Scholten’s ending of his campaign to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate, which “follows a push from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, or DSCC, to recruit and clear the field for fellow state House member Josh Turek.”

Common Dreams [[link removed]] cited a tweet by Open Markets legal director Sandeep Vaheesan pushing back on claims by Federal Trade Commission chair Andrew Ferguson that President Biden’s executive order on competition policy showed “undue hostility” to mergers. In the X post, Vaheesan pointed to data showing robust merger activity during the Biden years.

🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement to a lawsuit brought by book authors whose work had been illegally pirated and used to train the corporation’s models. The settlement sets an important standard for the rights of creators whose work has illegally been used for training purposes by several leading AI corporations. ( New York Times [[link removed]])

Brazilian antitrust authorities launched a probe into mining giant Anglo American’s effort to sell off its nickel mining operations in the country to China-backed firm MMG over concerns it would cement China’s dominance in the global nickel mining industry. ( Financial Times [[link removed]])

France’s competition regulators issued a record $378 million to Google and $178 million fine to Shein for their failure to follow French laws on securing proper consent before applying cookies to user browsers. ( Le Monde [[link removed]])

We appreciate your readership. Please consider making a contribution to support the continued publication of this newsletter.

DONATE [[link removed]] 📈 VITAL STAT: 3 million vs 300,000

The size of Fox News’s prime-time viewership compared with Newsmax, which has filed an antitrust lawsuit against its larger rival for illegally monopolizing the right-leaning television market. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claims Fox News stifles competition by penalizing distributors for carrying other networks and signing exclusionary contracts. ( MSNBC [[link removed]])

📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:

Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America [[link removed]] — Part memoir, part policy manifesto, Coming Up Short is former labor secretary Robert Reichs’s recounting of the decades he spent in Democratic political and policy-making circles. It includes accounts of the decisions made by leading neoliberal lawmakers that laid the groundwork for the current political crisis, as well as admonitions to his party for failing to embrace popular, common-sense policies that would ease inequality and decentralize power. Reich also offers hope for the next generation of liberal leaders, who he sees as uniquely aware of the structural issues in our economy and politics.

🔎 TIPS? COMMENTS? SUGGESTIONS?

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Written and edited by: Barry Lynn, Austin Ahlman, Ezmeralda Makhamreh, Anita Jain, and XXXX.

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