Ron Knox has a new piece in The Nation detailing the role state trustbusters are taking on as regulatory chaos sets in at the federal level. Knox writes:
Since Donald Trump took office in January, state officials who enforce laws around corporate power have been looking for signs about what kind of partners they can expect at the federal anti-monopoly agencies. Federal enforcers during the Biden administration teamed up with their state counterparts on major monopoly and merger prosecutions, but with the incoming administration’s more favorable view of corporate power, state enforcers have been wondering how seriously the feds might take their trustbusting duties.
The answer became clearer last week. The Federal Trade Commission, under Trump-appointed chair Andrew Ferguson, cleared a merger between advertising powerhouses Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, creating the world’s largest advertising company, with control of more than half of the industry. Ferguson’s FTC cleared the deal only after the companies agreed to allow their clients to advertise on any platform—most obviously Elon Musk’s X—regardless of its political proclivities. As Ferguson said of the nominally independent agency, ensuring that advertisers don’t boycott conservative media platforms “is a top priority of the Trump-Vance FTC.”
The decision to impose such blatant political goals on an otherwise anticompetitive merger dovetails with the agency’s work since Trump took office. In March, President Trump illegally fired the two Democratic members of the FTC, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, gutting the agency’s ability to carry out some of its core duties while furthering Trump’s campaign to strip federal agencies of their independence. Although the agency has found the capacity to hold workshops on the perils of gender-affirming care for minors, when it comes to combating corporate abuses the message to state officials is clear: You’re on your own.
The good news is that state leaders around the country are rising to meet the moment. Lawmakers and law enforcers from Rhode Island to Minnesota to Arizona are taking action to protect a public increasingly bullied, ripped off, and scammed by a cabal of predatory corporations. They are penning and often passing new laws aimed at checking corporate power and its harms—high prices, shuttered stores, lost jobs—and are dragging monopolists to court for their villainy.
Read the rest of the article here.
Ron Knox“Lawmakers and law enforcers from Rhode Island to Minnesota to Arizona are taking action to protect a public increasingly bullied, ripped off, and scammed by a cabal of predatory corporations.”
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