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FEATURED: At the Expense of America’s Infants, a Hard Lesson About Corporate Power
Corporate Power & Inflation Graphic [[link removed]]
The Consequences of Corporate Power Sink In. Health care conglomerate Abbott Nutrition’s market power in infant formula production — and the fragility, negligence, and regulatory capture that sits alongside it — has rightly become the central storyline in why frantic parents and caregivers are driving hours to find food for their babies. To help explain what we should take away from the crisis and how to ensure it never recurs, Economic Liberties’ Sarah Miller spoke to The New York Times’ David Leonhardt for " The Morning [[link removed]] ," Senior Fellow Moe Tkacik released a viral video [[link removed]] with More Perfect Union, and Research Director Matt Stoller’s deep-dive analysis [[link removed]] was featured in the Times’ parenting newsletter [[link removed]] , on MSNBC [[link removed]] , in a must-listen edition of On Point [[link removed]] , and on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram feed.
THE LATEST
The Most Aggressive Big Tech Bill Yet. Described by the Wall Street Journal as “ the [[link removed]] most aggressive of the legislative proposals to rein in the power of Big Tech [[link removed]] ,” Republican Senator Mike Lee joined forces with Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar to introduce a bill to break up Google’s monopoly over online advertising exchanges, which would also impact Facebook and Amazon’s ad businesses. Economic Liberties expressed support [[link removed]] for the legislation, which adheres to our view that Congress should write bright line legislation that judges hostile to antitrust enforcement can’t undermine. (Read our roadmap [[link removed]] for how to address Google and Facebook’s power through a regulated competition approach). Majority Leader Schumer committed to bringing additional tech-focused legislation [[link removed]] , including an important bill that targets Amazon’s e-commerce business, to the floor for a vote in early summer.
The FTC’s New Anti-Monopoly Majority. Economic Liberties celebrated the long-awaited confirmation of the FTC’s fifth commissioner, privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya. With a new anti-monopoly majority in place, Sarah Miller spoke to [[link removed]] The New York Times [[link removed]] to share expectations for the agency. At the FTC’s first vote with a full slate of commissioners, the agency unanimously approved [[link removed]] a policy statement that prohibits tech corporations that operate in the education space from harvesting schoolchildren’s data without parental consent.
The Department of Justice Eyes Private Equity. Last week, antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter told the [[link removed]] Financial Times [[link removed]] that private equity’s “business model is often very much at odds with the law and very much at odds with the competition we’re trying to protect,” noting also that it is “an extremely important part of our enforcement program.” Private equity spent more than $1 trillion on deals over the course of 2021, up 110 percent from 2020. Read Matt Stoller’s short history of private equity [[link removed]] in his newsletter BIG.
The Financial Times Covers Economic Liberties and Balanced Economy Project’s Stakeholder Capitalism Report. Can a corporation like Google really be considered “just?” That’s the opening provocation in a new report [[link removed]] by Economic Liberties Senior Fellow Denise Hearn and Balanced Economy Project Founder Michelle Meagher that pushes the stakeholder capitalism community to integrate a power analysis into its framework. The FT’s Rana Foroohar covered the report in her column “ The [[link removed]] Failures of Stakeholder Capitalism [[link removed]] ,” observing that ESG investing is missing the realities of market power.
USTR Takes Up Economic Liberties’ Petition to Protect Mexican Factory Workers. In a victory for upholding higher labor standards under USMCA, the renegotiated NAFTA agreement approved in 2020, USTR announced it would intervene on behalf of a petition from Economic Liberties’ Rethink Trade program and Mexican labor union SNITIS alleging worker abuse at a Panasonic plant. Read more in Bloomberg [[link removed]] and Reuters [[link removed]] .
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