Dear Friends,
On July 9, President Joe Biden did something extraordinary. With his Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, he embraced a new idea of America. Or rather, the president embraced the original idea – that government exists to break and harness power in order to make people free, equal, and safe, and to empower people to build the world we need tomorrow.
Here at Open Markets, we were thrilled to see that President Biden’s order builds directly on our pioneering efforts — and our published strategies [[link removed]] — to help Americans relearn that liberal democracy demands an eternal vigilance against all concentrations of private power and control.
We were equally thrilled to see the president in his speech blast the Reagan-era thinking that got us into this mess. In a close paraphrase of Open Markets’ core focus on the role of philosophical ideas in helping us to protect and expand our democracy, Biden said, “Forty years ago, we chose the wrong path.” America, he said, followed “the misguided philosophy of people like Robert Bork, and pulled back on enforcing laws to promote competition. I believe the experiment failed.”
To be clear, the executive order was anything but an academic statement. The 72 separate actions in the order target monopoly in technology, farming, health care, and the free press, as well as the concentration of power and control over America’s working families and entrepreneurs. Indeed, the directive reaches into almost every corner of the U.S. economy. Here again, many if not most of the actions build directly on Open Markets’ work.
When Open Markets first launched our fight, we assured you that if we all kept the faith — and kept marching forward — real victory was possible. Today we can say we helped deliver the most important anti-monopoly statement and plan of reform since the New Deal. We hope that you — our closest allies — recognize how key your support has been.
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It truly was your collaboration, amplification, and dollars that made this victory possible, as well as such other recent victories as the lawsuits against Google and Facebook, the new legislation in Congress, and the naming of our close friend and former colleague Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission and our equally close ally Jonathan Kanter to run the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice.
We are still only in the early days of this fight. Yes, we toppled the false icons of neoliberalism. But the brute concentrated power of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Bayer-Monsanto, and all the rest remains unbroken. That’s why we must regard every one of the 72 actions in the executive order as a separate call to arms.
In this next phase, we will need you at our side more than ever. It was Open Markets’ research, books, articles, testimony, events, and organizing that made this moment possible. The same is true going forward. As you know, such work, when done right, is neither easy nor cheap. And over the next few months we plan to expand our efforts to:
Rebuild the international trading system in ways that break monopoly power while avoiding dangerous protectionism.Protect freedom of speech and of the press against all arbitrary private control.Clear the way for the technologies and techniques necessary to master the ever-worsening threat of climate change.
PLEASE JOIN US to ensure that President Biden’s revolutionary executive order truly empowers us to rebuild our democracy, liberty, prosperity, and world in the days ahead.
Barry Lynn
Executive Director
Open Markets Institute
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