Listen: Big Tech Legislation is a Top Priority for Hardware Stores

Date: 5 Aug 2021 | posted in: Retail | 0 Facebooktwitterredditmail

In Washington and at the local level, we are at a pivotal moment for small businesses. There has been an incredible shift in the number of federal policymakers and local communities that are thinking deeply about independent, small businessess as a key part of how we have a vibrant economy and healthy communities.

Listen to Stacy Mitchell’s conversation with Dan Tratensek of the North American Hardware and Paint Association, as she explains this historic moment.

On the Taking Care of Business podcast, Stacy distills the new set of antitrust bills the House Judiciary committee passed that would break up Amazon and other big tech companies; the mandate for protecting small businesses, farmers, and ranchers that the new FTC chair, Lina Khan, brings to the Federal Trade Commission; and President’s Biden’s groundbreaking executive order to reverse corporate concentration.

They also talked about local governments that are using American Rescue Plan funding to reverse course on how they approach local economic development. (Stay tuned for Senior Researcher Kennedy Smith’s upcoming ILSR report on the best of these ideas.)

Small business owners, using their political voices through Small Business Rising, have helped make this moment possible. We have come so far, but the next weeks and months will be critical for moving the House’s historic antitrust legislation to break up and regulate Amazon. Lend your voice by going to Small Business Rising, a coalition that ILSR co-founded — representing 25 independent business organizations and more than 150,000 independent businesses owners.

 

You can listen to the podcast here.

 

If you like this post, be sure to sign up for the monthly Hometown Advantage newsletter for our latest reporting and research.

Facebooktwitterredditmail
Avatar photo
Follow Susan Holmberg:
Susan Holmberg

Susan Holmberg is Senior Editor and Researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Independent Business Initiative. She writes on corporate power and inequality and has been published in the New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Democracy Journal.

Avatar photo
Follow Stacy Mitchell:
Stacy Mitchell

Stacy Mitchell is co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs its Independent Business Initiative, which produces research and designs policy to counter concentrated corporate power and strengthen local economies.