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Community Wins: In the Face of Consolidation, Communities are Opening Their Own Grocery Stores
Communities are adopting innovative strategies to sustain their grocery stores or create new ones amidst the challenges posed by grocery sector consolidation. Some local governments are even creating a public option by operating grocery stores themselves. Here’s how these places are ensuring access to fresh, healthy food. … Read More
In Project Syndicate: Is America’s Merger Fever Breaking?
A major shift is afoot in the federal government’s stance on big business. The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission’s draft merger guidelines represent a major break with the neoliberal assumptions that have underpinned US antitrust enforcement for the last 40 years. In the Project Syndicate, Stacy Mitchell and Ron Know write how the draft guidelines, if adopted, would stop runaway corporate consolidation, rebuild local economies, and help preserve US democracy.… Read More
Statement on Proposed New Merger Guidelines
“This draft heralds a long overdue end to the dangerous and destructive approach of the last four decades,” Stacy Mitchell, ILSR Co-Executive Director, says in the statement.… Read More
In Civil Eats: Pacific Seafood Controls the Dungeness Crab Market, but Small Crabbers Are Fighting Back
Small fishermen in the Pacific Northwest are taking a stand against Pacific Seafood, the dominant West Coast crab processor, alleging that the corporation is exploiting its power to manipulate industry regulations in its favor and drive down the prices the fishermen receive for their catch. Writing in Civil Eats, Ron Knox provides our latest dispatch on how local economies are suffering the effects of unchecked monopoly power.… Read More
In The Sling: When Confronting Amazon’s Anticompetitive Conduct, the FTC Should Invoke Its Section 5 Authority
As the Federal Trade Commission sets its sights on challenging Amazon’s dominance in online retail, Ron Knox argues in The Sling that the agency must leverage its most potent weapon against anticompetitive behavior: Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.… Read More
Amazon’s Tight Grip on Cloud Computing Poses Multiple Threats. ILSR Urges FTC Action.
In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, ILSR warned that control over cloud computing, the backbone of the modern economy, is dangerously concentrated. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which controls more than 40 percent of global cloud infrastructure, has exploited its position to lock-in customers, shut out rivals, and reap unfair advantages in its other non-cloud business lines. ILSR urges the FTC to use its authorities to open the market to needed competition.… Read More
On the Capitol Forum Podcast: Food Deserts, Rising Prices, and Antitrust
Inflation in the grocery sector is a cover story for monopoly power, Stacy Mitchell explains on the Capitol Forum podcast. The real cost of groceries can be traced to Walmart’s predatory tactics and failed antitrust enforcement. … Read More
“[FTC] lawsuit reveals Amazon’s utter contempt for its customers,” says Stacy Mitchell in Statement on Amazon Prime Lawsuit
Mitchell goes on to highlight that last year, Amazon exploited its chokehold of the online retail sector by extracting more than $155 billion in fees from Amazon marketplace sellers, calling it, “an extraordinary measure of its monopoly power.”… Read More
Fact Sheet: Credit Card Swipe Fees — A Hidden Monopoly Tax on Small Businesses and Shoppers
Our new fact sheet explains how credit card monopolies and banks are imposing swipe fees — what is essentially a monopoly tax — to rake in profit at the expense of small business and consumers. Congress must take action. … Read More
“We are dismayed that Congress has yet to enact even these basic and obvious safeguards,” says Stacy Mitchell in statement on the reintroduction of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act
Mitchell points to Amazon’s ability to bully and exploit other businesses through its integration across business lines as an example of why the bill is such “an important piece of legislation.”… Read More
In the New York Times: The Real Reason Your Groceries Are Getting So Expensive
As big retailers exploit their financial control over suppliers, independent grocers face extinction, creating food deserts and driving up prices for everyone. In the New York Times, Stacy Mitchell calls to resurrect the Robinson-Patman Act and restore fair competition in the warped landscape of the American food system.… Read More
In ProMarket: Today’s Tax Code Fuels Corporate Power. It Wasn’t Always This Way
Our tax system used to serve as a check on corporate power. Now it fuels market concentration and undermines the ability of small businesses to compete, Susan Holmberg and Niko Lusiani explain in ProMarket. … Read More
NEW BRIEF: Tax Dodging is a Monopoly Tactic
“It’s time to revisit and reimagine the proactive role tax policy can have in enabling fair competition, tackling concentrated markets and in turn driving productivity and innovation, lowering prices, and fueling more and better jobs,” says Susan Holmberg, a co-author of the report.… Read More
Report: Tax Dodging is a Monopoly Tactic
Local and federal policymakers have systematically structured tax policy in a way that deepens the concentration of corporate power, Stacy Mitchell and Susan Holmberg argue in this issue brief, co-published with the Roosevelt Institute.… Read More
Dollar Store Restrictions
As dollar stores multiply rapidly across the U.S., cities are developing dollar store-specific policies to rein in their growth. Such policies include “dispersal restrictions” that set limits on how close new dollar stores can be to existing ones. These ordinances account for the existing concentration of dollar stores within a neighborhood or city and help ensure that these chains cannot amass at such a density that they impede opportunities for grocery stores and other businesses to take root and grow. Our new map shows dollar store defeats and restrictions across the country. … Read More