No images? Click here Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we explain why the Justice Department should stop a proposed merger among giant publishers, and we discuss our new report on vaccines, which lays out a plan for the Biden administration to stop the next pandemic by reforming the vaccine production system. Sen. Booker Joins Open Markets and Family Farm Action to Condemn Ag Monopolies Sen. Cory Booker praised a landmark report on consolidation in the U.S. food and farming economy, co-produced by Family Farm Action Alliance and Open Markets, at an online event to mark the report’s release on Nov. 19. “Consolidation in our food system is a grave threat to our family farmers and rural communities,” Booker said, adding that there is an “urgent need for Congress to take action to address corporate concentration and create a food system that is rooted in fairness and opportunity for all,” Mother Jones, The Counter, Ag Daily, Insider NJ, and Tri-State Livestock News covered the event and the report. The report, titled “The Food System: Concentration and Its Impacts,” was written by Dr. Mary Hendrickson, Dr. Phil Howard, Emily Miller, and Dr. Douglas Constance. Dr. Hendrickson, a rural sociologist and leading food system scholar, discussed at the event the implications of a concentrated agrifood system. “Even with my years of examining consolidation in the food system, I am profoundly distressed by its ecological waste, the erosion of communities, and its callous treatment of human beings,” she said. The report provides new data on our overly concentrated food supply chain. In the U.S., the top four corporations control 80% of soybean processing, 73% of beef processing, and 67% of pork processing. The report also made clear that such figures actually understate the problem, as the processors often enjoy strong monopolies across entire regions of the country. The report calls for policies to democratize the food system through antitrust enforcement, prioritizing racial equity, transforming and redirecting production subsidies, and empowering alternative and localized food systems and economies. Open Markets Demands DOJ Stop Bertelsmann’s Plan to Buy Simon & Schuster Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German publishing conglomerate Bertelsmann and is the largest trade publisher in the country, announced plans on Nov. 25 to buy Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for $2.175 billion. The deal would concentrate too much power over American authors and readers in the hands of a single corporation, so Open Markets called on the Department of Justice to block the proposed merger. Open Markets’ statement was covered by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Publishers Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, MarketWatch, and The American Booksellers Association. “Bertelsmann’s plan to take control of Simon & Schuster poses multiple dangers to American democracy and to the interests of America’s authors and readers,” said Open Markets Institute Executive Director Barry Lynn. “The deal will make it harder for authors and editors to attract the support they need to research, write, and prepare the sorts of books Americans need to address the many serious political and economic crises we now face. It will also threaten the ability of independent booksellers — who are already reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and other pressures — to stay in business.” Through the 1970s, the U.S. publishing industry was home to more than 20 major publishers. By 2013, consolidation unleashed by the Reagan administration had reduced that number to six. If approved, the takeover of Simon & Schuster would bring three of these six under the control of a single corporation and would increase pressure on the remaining independents to consolidate. Sally Hubbard, Open Markets’ director of enforcement strategy, explained to The Washington Post how consolidation in the publishing industry erodes freedom of expression. “Diversity of speech and a marketplace of ideas are incredibly important,” she said. “You start having a less pluralistic society, more concentration of ideas through fewer gatekeepers.” The root cause of consolidation among publishers is Amazon’s dominant position among booksellers. Amazon’s monopoly allows it to dictate terms to publishers, who react by consolidating. “That’s an extortive and extortionary relationship,” Hubbard said, “not a healthy marketplace.” To solve the problem, the Justice Department needs to address both the harmful consolidation among publishers and Amazon’s pernicious monopoly. New Open Markets Report: How Monopolists Raided the U.S. Vaccine System, and How Biden Can Defeat Next Pandemic Pfizer and Moderna recently announced extremely promising trial results for COVID-19 vaccine candidates, and millions of Americans are now looking forward to resuming their pre-pandemic lives. But as Open Markets explains in a new report, production of enough vaccine to protect the entire U.S. population will take much longer than it could have, because monopolists have degraded vaccine manufacturing capacity in recent decades. In the Nov. 16 report, “Corporate Monopoly and the Decline of America’s Vaccine Industry,” Open Markets presents a comprehensive history of U.S. vaccine production and lays out how the Biden administration should fix the vaccine system and defeat the next pandemic. The report was covered by Axios, Fast Company, and Common Dreams. For much of the 20th century, America’s vaccine system was the best in the world, thanks largely to strong government support. Since the overthrow of traditional anti-monopoly law in the 1980s, however, monopolists have concentrated control over the production of most vaccines and ancillary components. As a result, prices have skyrocketed, even for the most basic childhood vaccines, and many diseases we thought we had eradicated long ago have returned. The report makes clear that new legislation is needed. Prosecutors can begin to reverse the problem simply be enforcing the law as it was originally written. 🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
We appreciate your readership. Please consider making a contribution to support the continued publication of this newsletter. 📈 VITAL STAT:$500 millionThe amount of money raised by Liberty Media owner and founder John Malone and CEO Greg Maffei to create a special purpose acquisition company to pursue a merger in the media, telecom, and entertainment industry. Liberty Media has increased its influence in the media industry over the past few years, with controlling stakes in Sirius XM and Pandora, a 50% stake in iHeartMedia, and a 33% stake in Live Nation Entertainment. 📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
BARRY LYNN’S NEW BOOK
Liberty From All Masters The New American Autocracy vs. The Will of the People St. Martin’s Press has published Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters. Liberty is Lynn’s first book since 2010’s Cornered. In his new work, Lynn warns of the threat to liberty and democracy posed by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, because of their ability to manipulate the flows of information and business in America. Barry then details how Americans over the course of two centuries built a “System of Liberty,” and shows how we Americans can put this system to work again today. Lynn also offers a hopeful vision for how we can use anti-monopoly law to rebuild our society and our democracy from the ground up. Liberty from All Masters has already made waves for its empowering call to restore democracy by resurrecting forgotten tools and institutions. “Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift debate in Washington than Barry Lynn. In Liberty from All Masters, he proves himself as a lyrical theorist and a bold interpreter of history. This book is an elegant summoning of a forgotten tradition that can help the nation usher in a new freedom,” says Franklin Foer, author of World Without Mind and national correspondent for The Atlantic. You can order your copy of Lynn’s book here.
SALLY HUBBARD’S NEW BOOK
MONOPOLIES SUCK 7 Ways Big Corporations Rule Your Life and How to Take Back Control Simon & Schuster published Monopolies Suck by Sally Hubbard on Oct. 27. The book is the first by Hubbard, who is Open Markets’ director of enforcement strategy. Hubbard examines how modern monopolies rob Americans of a healthy food supply, the ability to care for the sick, and a habitable planet, because monopolies use business practices that deplete rather than generate. Monopolists also threaten fair elections, our free press, our privacy, and, ultimately, the American Dream, Hubbard shows. In Monopolies Suck, Hubbard reminds readers that antitrust enforcers already have the tools to dismantle corporate power and that decisive action must be taken before monopolies undermine our economy and democracy for generations to come. In Monopolies Suck, Sally provides an important new view of America’s monopoly crisis and of the political and economic harms of concentrated private power. Order your copy here. 🔎 TIPS? COMMENTS? SUGGESTIONS? We would love to hear from you—just reply to this e-mail and drop us a line. Give us your feedback, alert us to competition policy news, or let us know your favorite story from this issue. |