Antitrust for the People. In parallel to the listening forums, the FTC and DOJ opened a comment period to receive input from the public on merger policy. Economic Liberties launched an effort to generate comments that helped deliver nearly 6,000 submissions, compared to just a few dozen from industry groups when the policy was revised a decade ago. In “The Bottom-Up Battle Against Corporate Power,” the American Prospect wrote, “Part of [the resurgence of public interest] is due to the new leadership at the agencies. But the American Economic Liberties Project, a D.C.-based anti-monopoly organization, has also solicited comments from the public, bringing an obscure process to the grassroots level.”
Merger Policy is Health Care Policy. That’s why we applauded the DOJ in the AP and Reuters for suing to block UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change Health, a particularly awful combination that Senior Policy Analyst Krista Brown and former Policy Analyst Olivia Webb dissected for the American Prospect. Also for the Prospect, Senior Fellow Moe Tkacik published a scorching indictment of Apollo Global’s destruction of rural hospital systems, something that Idaho RN Joe Thon discussed from firsthand experience in a recent FTC/DOJ listening forum.
“A Whole Set of Legal Concerns, Including Invitation to Collude.” That’s FTC Chair Lina Khan discussing the now well-documented phenomenon of CEOs sharing their pricing strategies on earnings calls. With rising prices still a top national concern, Economic Liberties released our first piece of model federal and state legislation, shared exclusively with The New York Times, to reform today’s defendant-friendly price-fixing laws. Our team also submitted a detailed comment to the New York Attorney General to inform New York’s price-gouging rulemaking initiative, weighed in on the connection between market power and inflation for Politico and the Guardian, asked the CEA to study the relationship between profits and prices in a letter covered by the Washington Post, and celebrated new research from the Economic Policy Institute that validated Research Director Matt Stoller’s widely-cited December analysis that 60 percent of inflation is driven by higher profits.
Fighting the Transfer of Wealth from Communities to Big Corporations. Project Ocean. Project Velvet. Project Hawk. Whatever you call it, the massive tax subsidies that corporations and state governments negotiate in secret are a scam that disadvantage families, small businesses, and communities. That’s why Economic Liberties took an idea, which we first outlined in a viral New York Times op-ed, and teamed up with a diverse set of partners to launch the Ban Secret Deals campaign. This coalition of local and national groups is supporting public officials across the country to end non-disclosure agreements in economic development deals for good. Learn more about why these secret deals are bad news for local communities in Fast Company, read State and Local Policy Director Pat Garofalo and Strong Economy for All’s Michael Kink’s op-ed in the New York Daily News, and browse the “Dirtiest Dozen” economic development deals in our joint report with New York Communities for Change, Hedge Clippers, and other partners.
Senator Tammy Baldwin Talks Supply Chains. Economic Liberties partnered with Groundwork Collaborative and the American Prospect to host Senator Tammy Baldwin for “Supply Chain Fragility: How To Rebuild a Resilient System.” We also heard from the head of the Independent Truckers Association, who explained the trucker “shortage,” the CEO of Simple Modern, who reshored his company’s drinkware production to Oklahoma, and experts Charmaine Chua, Matt Jinoo Buck, and Rakeen Mabud.
Taking on Amazon at Home and Abroad. The Rethink Trade team is working with allies in Congress to close a dangerous loophole in U.S. customs law allowing billions of dollars of Chinese imports, especially through Amazon’s marketplace, that are unsafe, counterfeit, or made with forced labor to enter the U.S. uninspected and without being subjected to taxes or duties. Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach hosted Rep. Earl Blumenauar, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Open Society’s Tom Perriello, and labor leaders in an event to emphasize the importance of this under-the-radar policy change.
Powering The Anti-Monopoly Movement. Economic Liberties’ Executive Director Sarah Miller and Research Director Matt Stoller were #2 and #5 on Baron’s Antitrust “Super Influencers” list, while Sarah, Matt, and Lori Wallach, Economic Liberties’ Director of Rethink Trade, were recognized in Washingtonian’s annual “Most Influential People Shaping Policy” special issue.
Welcoming Two New Leaders to the Economic Liberties Team. Katie Van Dyck, a litigator with two decades of experience fighting for consumers, small businesses, and employees in false advertising, antitrust, and wage & hour class actions, is joining the team as Senior Legal Counsel. We also welcomed Erik Peinert as our new Research Manager; Erik received his PhD from Brown University, where he is an affiliated researcher at the Rhodes Center for International Finance, and is publishing a book, Monopoly Politics: Price Competition, Learning, and the Evolution of Policy Regimes, on the long-term evolution of politics and policy around competition and market power in the 20th century in the United States and Europe. Read Erik’s recent article, “Inflation, Corporate Power, and the Forgotten New Deal.”
The Politics of Corporate Power. Sarah Miller and More Perfect Union founder Faiz Shakir published an article in Democracy Journal’s “Beyond Neoliberalism Part II” on the political opportunities presented by the labor and anti-monopoly movements’ concurrent rise. In the New Republic, Sarah also made the case for zeroing in on corporate power in the wake of Build Back Better’s demise.
“A Monopoly on Cool”: Senior Fellow Moe Tkacik Featured in Netflix’s New Documentary White Hot. Moe’s previous reporting on Abercrombie & Fitch’s discriminatory hiring practices and overall social perniciousness got a new lease on life on Netflix. Watch her in the film’s trailer here.
