Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we spotlight our seminal report on how to fix America’s shipbuilding crisis, Charting a New Course: Steering U.S. Maritime Policy Towards Security and Prosperity. We also explore how Apple’s development of its own modem chip illustrates why we need more aggressive antitrust. And we link to two new articles, that detail how liberal democrats can retake power and rebuild a democratic republic.
OMI’s Barry Lynn and Phil Longman Publish Features on Political Economy in Washington Monthly
Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn published an essay in Washington Monthly calling on Democrats to defeat Trumpism by recovering the foundational American language of liberty, shared power, and economic democracy — principles that once made the Democratic Party a champion of the working class. Titled “Resurrecting the Rebel Alliance: To End the Age of Trump, Democrats Must Relearn the Language and Levers of Power,” Lynn’s piece draws on his own working-class upbringing and frontline reporting to argue that the rise of Donald Trump stems from the Democratic Party’s decades-long retreat from the politics of personal liberty and power-sharing. “The task ahead for Democrats is… to establish a new political economic regime which ensures that our liberty and prosperity are never again threatened by any homegrown oligarch or autocrat,” Lynn writes.
Washington Monthly also published “The Secret to Reindustrializing America Is Not Tax Cuts and Tariffs. It’s Regulated Competition,” by Open Markets policy director Phillip Longman, in which he calls for the restoration of a set of rules that structured industries — for example, rules on where banks could operate and how much interest they could they charge or what fares railroads or airlines could set — and ultimately fueled America’s 20th-century rise as a capitalist superpower. “This isn’t about rolling back the clock,” Longman writes. “It’s about understanding that our most successful economic era was governed by a uniquely American system of industrial governance — one that can and should be adapted for the 21st century.”
Open Markets Launches Report on Reviving America’s Lapsed Ocean Shipping Industry
Open Markets Institute published a seminal report, Charting a New Course: Steering U.S. Maritime Policy Towards Security and Prosperity, tracing the decline of America’s ocean shipping industry after decades of deregulation and offshoring and calling for urgent policy reforms to rebuild domestic maritime strength and protect national security. Researched and written by OMI transportation analyst Arnav Rao, Charting a New Course warns that the U.S. is dangerously dependent on foreign-controlled ocean shipping with the three major ocean carrier alliances, which are comprised entirely of foreign corporations, capturing around 90% of global trade. Rao also details how our poor regulation of shipping services contributed to the dangerous collapse of the U.S. shipbuilding industry. “The collapse of U.S. capacity to build ships poses major threats to U.S. national security,” Rao writes. Read the report here. Also read an article by Rao on the topic in The Atlantic. The report received coverage in gCaptain, Splash Maritime and Offshore News, and richardcyoung.com.
Apple’s Modem Chip Breakthrough Signals Need for More, Not Less Antitrust Enforcement
Daniel Hanley
In February, Apple released a new iPhone featuring a new wireless modem chip designed in-house, reducing its dependence on Qualcomm, which has dominated the design and sale of this essential smartphone component. Apple's chip, the C1, was 6 years in the making. The C1 reportedly delivers solid performance and power efficiency, despite lower top-end speeds compared with Qualcomm’s modem.
On the surface, this story is an example of technological innovation and, hence, potentially an argument for easing antitrust enforcement in the wireless chip industry. Yet, Apple’s development of the C1 chip highlights the structural pressure and resources required to challenge an entrenched firm like Qualcomm. Rather than a reason to ease antitrust enforcement, the story makes a clear case for strengthening it. To understand what Apple’s chip means, it’s important to examine how Qualcomm has controlled this industry for more than two decades.
Qualcomm was founded in 1985 and pioneered many advances in wireless communication technology. Its innovations in the 2000s served as a foundation of modern mobile networks. But as Qualcomm’s dominance grew, concerns about its tactics grew as well. Critics pointed to its licensing practice (“no license, no chips”) as the means by which it leveraged control over chip design to extract excessive royalties. Qualcomm created a supply chain chokepoint to coerce its purchasers into accepting its licensing terms, leaving even giant buyers like Apple and Samsung lacking viable alternatives.
In 2013, China initiated the first major antitrust investigation against Qualcomm’s practices. Many other jurisdictions followed, including the EU and South Korea. In 2023, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld a $785 million judgment against Qualcomm for abusive licensing practices.
In the U.S., the first major antitrust suit against Qualcomm was filed in 2017 by the FTC, which argued that the corporation’s unfair licensing terms kept prices artificially high. The lawsuit initially succeeded, with Judge Lucy Koh determining that Qualcomm's practices had “strangled competition in the [modem chip market] for years…harm[ing] rivals, OEMs, and end consumers[.]”
After Qualcomm appealed the decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling in August 2020. Relying on antiquated Chicago School analysis, the judges uncritically characterized Qualcomm's tactics as legally “hypercompetitive.” Qualcomm was allowed to continue business as usual. (Read Open Markets Institute’s 2019 amicus brief in support of Judge Koh’s decision.)
Qualcomm’s successful appeal left all its customers at the mercy of the corporation’s licensing terms. Apple, however, thanks to its vast wealth and power, was able to do something about it – pouring billions into developing an in-house solution, boosted by the acquisition of Intel’s smartphone modem business in 2019.
Critics could argue that Apple's modem project proves that competition is flourishing in this market. The problem, however, is that Apple is practically alone in having the scale and financial might to spend years developing an expensive, high-risk product. And even Apple wasn’t sure of the outcome, hedging its bets in a way only such a large corporation can by paying Qualcomm a secret amount, likely in the billions, in 2020 to guarantee a supply of modem chips for up to eight years while developing its own. And even with all its advantages, Apple’s chip falls short of matching Qualcomm's capabilities.
Under the antitrust laws, businesses are generally encouraged to expand their operations and product portfolios by developing new capabilities. But the key lesson here is that if a corporation as dominant as Apple was barely able to break free from Qualcomm, what hope does any other business have? Moreover, Apple's move also reinforces the power of another tech giant: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Like Qualcomm, Apple now relies on TSMC to manufacture its modem chips, which further entrenches production in this one dominant firm.
It would also be wrong to conclude that Apple is fully committed to such innovation. On the contrary, as Vision Pro and Siri attest, the corporation does not always succeed when it attempts to develop new products. Indeed, Apple today spends twice as much on stock buybacks and dividends as on R&D.
That’s why enforcers around the world should turn their attention back to Qualcomm's chokehold on this sector, such as by pursuing a breakup of the corporation. Another option would be to revive a once-powerful antitrust policy under which the government forced dominant corporations to license essential technologies, either for free or for a small fee. Enforcers should also focus their attention on TSMC.
If enforcers seek immediate inspiration or guidance, they might turn to the DOJ’s current lawsuit against Apple, which aims to break its restrictive technical rules to block competition and keep consumers and developers locked into its services.
The question isn’t whether a corporation like Apple can afford to build a modem or whether it succeeds or fails in doing so. It’s whether markets are constructed to deliver the best outcomes for society, in the form of lower costs, better quality, resilient supply chains, diverse suppliers, open competition, and real innovation. Concentrated control threatens all of that.
Open Markets Sponsors Panel on Innovation at Europe’s CPDP Conference
In late May, the Open Markets Institute sponsored a panel, “Innovation Beyond Big Tech,” on the main stage at CPDP.ai 2025 in Brussels. Led by Europe director Max von Thun, the discussion was aimed at challenging the myth that Big Tech is the primary driver of AI innovation, highlighting how competition, regulation, and policies in the public interest can foster a more open and democratic innovation ecosystem. Speakers on the panel included Wolfgang Oels, chief operating officer of climate-friendly search engine Ecosia; Ariel Ezrachi, Oxford University professor of competition law; Filomena Chirico, head of the digital platforms unit at DG Comp, European Commission, and; Linda Griffin, vice president of global public policy at Mozilla.
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
- Open Markets Europe director Max von Thun published an op-ed in the Financial Times urging governments to treat cloud computing as essential public infrastructure. Drawing from the groundbreaking report OMI published last month, von Thun warns that the unchecked dominance of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft poses serious risks to national security,
innovation, and democratic oversight and calls on governments to consider structural separation. “Requiring Amazon, Google and Microsoft to spin off their cloud divisions would eliminate their ability to use this critical infrastructure to extend their dominance into new markets,” von Thun urges.
- Open Markets senior fellow Johnny Ryan is leading Ireland’s first-ever class action lawsuit against Microsoft for privacy violations by its online advertising business, to be heard by the High Court of Ireland. Noting the case finally enables real enforcement of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation after years of regulatory paralysis, Ryan said, “Today, nine years and one day after the GDPR was first introduced, we are finally opening up a way to enforce it against big tech on behalf of everyone.”
- Open Markets Institute led a letter signed by 16 other organizations to Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson urging him to vigorously defend the agency’s 2024 rule banning non-compete clauses. OMI legal director Sandeep Vaheesan said of the letter, “Chairman Ferguson has a special opportunity here to stand up for workers and defend the FTC’s authority to act in the public interest.” Read the letter here.
- Europe director Max von Thun applauded the European Commission’s fining of two major delivery companies — Delivery Hero and Glovo — hundreds of millions of euros for no-poach agreements and other anticompetitive practices. Von Thun said the move, the first of its kind for the regulatory body, “shows that the Commission is finally moving beyond its narrowly consumer-focused approach by investigating how concentrated corporate power harms other important stakeholders, including workers.”
- OMI’s senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley and industrial policy program manager Audrey Stienon coauthored a white paper explaining how governments can integrate competition policy into industrial strategy to prevent monopolies and ensure equitable market outcomes. “By placing competition policy at the center of industrial strategy, governments can preserve democratic oversight of markets and ensure that the benefits of economic transitions are broadly and fairly shared,” they write. PYMNTS published the report.
The Open Markets Institute submitted a comment to the European Commission’s call for evidence on the European Democracy Shield, an initiative seeking to protect Europe’s democratic institutions and processes from foreign interference, disinformation, and cyber threats. In its submission, OMI noted that Big Tech’s surveillance advertising-based business model and its one-sided relationship with publishers undermines both the independent media and democratic principles. “The Democracy Shield initiative should thus treat dominant technology corporations not only as conduits, but also as threats to democratic processes and democratic resilience in their own right,” read the submission, which can be viewed here.
Dr. Courtney Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets, spoke at an event titled “Digital Threats to Democracy” hosted by the League of Women Voters in Maine, Alaska, and Colorado. She discussed how Big Tech’s unchecked market power and disinformation are undermining democracy and outlined policy solutions to help restore a healthy information environment.
OMI legal director Sandeep Vaheesan appeared on a KPFA podcast in an episode called “Capitalism and its critics, real abundance vs. bogus abundance” to discuss his skepticism of the abundance agenda gaining steam in some policy circles. He drew from an argument he powerfully laid out last month in Boston Review, which was cited in In the Public Interest’s weekly roundup.
Europe director Max von Thun contributed an essay to the new book Musk, Power, and the EU: Can EU Law Tackle the Challenges of Unchecked Plutocracy?, which was funded by the EU. In his chapter, von Thun warns that Europe’s deepening dependence on U.S. tech giants, exemplified by Elon Musk’s sprawling influence, poses serious risks to European sovereignty and democracy and calls for stronger enforcement of EU law, a unified strategic vision, and a bold push to reclaim digital autonomy.
Von Thun also participated at the Nextcloud Summit in Munich, speaking on a panel titled “Europe Can Do It: Strengthening Digital Sovereignty.” Nextcloud is an open-source challenger to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
CJL@OMI director Dr. Courtney Radsch participated in a virtual discussion, “Regulating AI: Navigating the Copyright Challenge” hosted by Bangalore-based Centre for Competition Law and Economics.
Truthout and Common Dreams cited OMI legal director Sandeep Vaheesan’s statement on the FTC’s recent withdrawal of its Robinson-Patman lawsuit againt PepsiCo, in which he called out the current FTC commissioners for not being “willing to faithfully apply the law enacted by Congress.”
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
- Google agreed to spend $500 million revamping its compliance protocols in order to settle several shareholder lawsuits accusing the corporation of systematic antitrust violations. (Ars Technica)
- AstraZeneca agreed to pay $51 million to settle a U.S. class action antitrust case accusing the drug giant of illegally coordinating with competitors to delay marketing a generic version of a schizophrenia and bipolar disorder drug. (Reuters)
- Germany’s antitrust authority issued a warning to Amazon over concerns its pricing policies for third-party sellers violate national and European antitrust rules. (Competition Policy International)
- Indonesia’s antitrust authority issued a statement saying TikTok’s acquisition of Tokopedia, the nation’s biggest e-commerce company, posed large monopoly risks, and initiated a suite of strict oversight requirements for the two companies over the next two years. (Reuters)
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📈 VITAL STAT:
19 billion
The combined value of Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, which the corporation might be forced to sell off after it was accused in an FTC antitrust trial of using a “buy or bury” strategy to stifle social media startups before they could threaten its social media empire. (New York Post)
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company — Former Financial Times reporter Patrick McGee pulls back the curtain on Apple’s entrenchment in China, which allowed the tech giant to strengthen its grip on hardware markets with ultra-low prices and fuel the authoritarian regime’s rise to a global technology manufacturing superpower. McGee’s account highlights concerns about the substantial leverage that relationship now gives China over one of America’s most powerful corporations.
Order Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan’s new book:
Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director at the Open Markets Institute, published his first book Democracy in Power: A History of Electrification in the United States on December 3, 2024. Vaheesan examines the history—and presents a possible future—of the people of the United States wresting control of the power sector from Wall Street, including through institutions like the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electric cooperatives.
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