Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, has provided a major service to the incoming Biden administration. The fierce anti-monopoly advocate offers a roadmap for the new president to pursue a progressive and transformative presidency without cooperation from Congress.
In his new piece How Biden Can Transform America, which appears online and.in the next print issue of the Washington Monthly (please subscribe), Lynn explains how existing antitrust laws can help Biden control health care costs, stimulate the economy, create jobs, reinvigorate America, tackle climate change, and build a stronger independent media more capable of combatting disinformation.
As Lynn explains, this isn’t just a matter of combining good policy with good politics. It’s really Biden’s only chance at success. It’s a view he fleshes out at greater length in his new book Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People
The Democrats, of course, have a very narrow majority in the House of Representatives, and Senate control hinges on the outcome of those January runoff elections in Georgia. Even if the Democrats win those races and get a 50-50 Senate majority (the vice-president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate), they can’t end the legislative filibuster because of the opposition of some of their own members, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia. This means legislation will require the assent of at least 10 Republican senators who operate under the leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Through no fault of his own, Biden’s legislative agenda is blocked for at least the first two years of his presidency, and most likely for the entirety of his first term. He can resign himself to being ineffectual, or he can use the antitrust tools he has at his disposal, and those tools are more powerful than is commonly understood.
On day one, President Biden will be able to strap himself into the cockpit of a governing machine purpose-built during the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations—and fortified by Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and even Richard Nixon—to break power, distribute opportunity, build community, protect security, and engage citizens in constructive activities. This system includes agencies with great untapped powers, like the FTC and the Department of Agriculture, which have far-reaching and long-neglected rule-making authority. And it includes strong anti-monopoly powers in just about every office of government, including the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Defense Department, the Transportation Department, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, among many others.
These powers have lay largely dormant since the Reagan administration when traditional antitrust regulation was gutted in favor of what was supposed to be the advancement of consumer interests. Rather than breaking up monopolies to protect small business owners, farmers, and entrepreneurs, they encouraged corporate concentration believing it would yield greater efficiencies and lower prices. They didn’t repeal the antitrust laws or authorities, but rather chose to enforce them differently, or not at all.
This change was largely continued by the following five administrations, leading to the massive corporate consolidation we see today. But Biden would not need permission from Congress to revert back to the previous practice of antitrust enforcement that prevailed under Democratic and Republican presidents between the Woodrow Wilson and Reagan.
A hidden advantage to this strategy is explained, in part, by understanding how Reagan got away with what Lynn calls “the single most dramatic ideological reversal in American history.” By the time Reagan took office “anti-monopoly enforcement had become so successfully routinized by the early 1980s that few Americans thought much about it.” Since the important changes took place not in Congress but in office spaces throughout the vast federal bureaucracy, the transformation was almost invisible to the public.
It didn’t hurt that Reagan has some ideological support on the left:
It was also because highly influential “progressive” thinkers such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Lester Thurow largely agreed with the underlying goal of Robert Bork and the other libertarian scholars who were advising Reagan. They too favored extreme concentration of corporate power, but, in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, they intended it to be under the day-to-day direction of the executive branch.
Biden can capitalize on a similar dynamic. While the public is focused on quarrelsome and unproductive debates on Capitol Hill, he can work behind the scenes to bust up monopolies. He’ll find sympathetic ears on the right where concern about market concentration is on the rise.
Just this week, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, accusing them of colluding with Facebook to manipulate online advertising exchanges in their favor. Bloomberg Business reports that Clinton-era Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and his firm will be hired to prosecute the case. Paxton is generally a laughable figure. He is facing allegations of bribery from his own top staff and led a frivolous and menacing lawsuit to overturn the presidential election in four states that went for Biden. The Supreme Court unanimously chose not to overturn those contests. But Paxton has had an interesting footprint when it comes to antitrust. He helped, convince Bill Barr’s Justice Department to bring a major antitrust suit against Google in October. The DOJ case focuses on Google’s use of exclusive contracts to assure its search dominance in browsers and mobile devices.
On Thursday, Google’s monopolistic search practices were challenged by over 30 states in an antitrust case led by the Democratic attorney general of Colorado and the Republican attorney general of Nebraska. Axios reports that it accuses Google of hurting “rival specialized search companies like Yelp or TripAdvisor by favoring its own results” and “using those same tactics to extend its search-related monopolies into emerging technology like smart speakers.”
In addition to the scrutiny Facebook is facing for its role in Google’s ad exchanges, the social networking site’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram are in the crosshairs of both the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James. The suits were jointly announced on December 7 and may be combined. The FTC filing seeks nothing less than the breakup of Facebook.
This extensive and bipartisan push to limit the power of social media giants gives Biden some momentum to push a broader antitrust strategy. While congressional Republicans would surely oppose strengthening antitrust laws –mainly because of the high costs GOP lawmakers pay when they’re seen to be cooperating with the enemy–he may get tacit blessing for tougher enforcement from populist conservative quarters outside the Beltway.
Importantly, however, he won’t require their support. Well-established laws give him the power he needs..
For Lynn, however, it’s important that Biden consider the alterative to getting tough on monopolies:
By contrast, if Biden fails to seize the initiative, he might be remembered as little more than a woebegone regent for Trump in his exile, in Elba by the Sea Florida. And Democrats should be absolutely honest about what a defensive, cautious, backward-looking, tortoise-like Biden administration will deliver, which might be something like the end of democracy in America and around the world.
Failure to use anti-monopolism to seize the initiative would leave Trump’s Republican Party free to use the same populist rhetoric to divide and scatter the Democratic Party in 2022 and 2024, while once again bringing the Koch-funded neoliberal wing of the GOP back into gawky alignment with Trump’s national populist wing.
Trumpism, in part, grew out of the devastation wrought by four decades of lax antitrust enforcement and the loss of economic liberty, opportunity, and growth it wrought. The best way to weaken Trump’s movement is to take on market concentration and revive entrepreneurship and the sense of freedom that has been choked out of so much of America.
If Biden doesn’t take Lynn up on his advice and follow his roadmap, he’s inviting a Trump comeback in four years, and our Republic cannot survive that.
Great article, and I fully agree. Have you seen any indication that Biden’s choice of cabinet officials and appointments show you he’s in sync with these ideas? Does Barry Lynn have personal/professional connection to Biden or any of the appointments that you know of? I’m trying to be optimistic that the points raised in the Washington Monthly piece (and the ones you’ve raised here over many years) are ones actually getting to important people in the incoming administration and not just part of the many voices on the outside clamoring for attention.
Vilsack in Ag would seem to indicate that he has no intention of following these recommendations.
Not necessarily. Remember why FDR named Joe Kennedy as the first head of the SEC.
I don’t see any parallels. FDR was trying to co-opt a rich, powerful player to his agenda, Vilsack is neither, plus he’s a true believer in the corporate cause. He’s not gonna pursue an anti-monopoly agenda, and it’s in ag, where some of the biggest monopoly problems exist.
Super important article which I’m doing my best to pass on to others. We’ll know the effort is successful is skimpier versions appear in major publications. Thanks for passing it along. It’s this sort of insight that brings me here every day.
Excellent. I hope Biden et al. are already looking into this.
This could be bad advice. There was some discussion of the failure of the Arab Spring today on Fareed Zakaria . The points made were, as best I understood, that institutions of government are critical, as is compromise. Trump has appointed his flunkies now for four years and it is plain to see the divisions in the country today. One must prepare for compromise as the first order of business, Otherwise the backlash could be severe as they were in Egypt and Syria, perhaps not so bad but it will be there. Those 74 million people who voted for Trump will assure that. So the winners can not assume that all things progressive or anti monopoly will be accepted. Some caution is in order.
I am reminded that Obama entered with some good ideas for expanded health care and lost his majority two years later and his progressive ideas died then. So first be sure we really do control the government and think compromise. We had none of that in Obama’s first term, if ever.
i love AOC and Sanders but they need to be controlled and directed.
compromise? with Mitch? please explain to me how that happens other than Dems capitulating to Mitch, who wants to do to Biden what he did to Obama.
Yeah he is obstinate to be sure but he doesn’t want a bill now — and yet it appears he will accept something as he did in the spring. I agree he is a stone in our shoe but he a very important member of the opposition and some might say that without compromise you really don’t have democracy. Biden has suggested he will work with him and he may have to unless he wins both elections in Georgia. Without that the default position in executive orders and anti monopoly.
OT perhaps but has anyone noticed that General Flynn wants to declare Marshall law and have the military conduct another election in selected states and Trump wants whacky Sydney Powell as an advisor, Holy shit what sort of place do we live now? Wanna bet the Proud Boys and friends are already signing up? Is it any wonder Barr quit?
It’s hard to address something so unprecedented. If the Republican party were unified behind Trump in installing him as dictator, perhaps there would be a chance they’d succeed. It’s good to see there are places that even many Republicans won’t go — though clearly some would and that in itself is frightening.
Let us hope enough republicans refuse to support him or we may really have a war on our hands. I actually think he is more interested in grift and money than becoming a dictator if war is in the offing. Hence Powell as an advisor. She is a clown.
The delegitimization of democratic politicians and policies is a strategy of the larger goal to cement in place right wing, and thus corporate power. That’s what the insanity of the last six weeks of denying Biden as president-elect was/is about, at least from the perspective of “sane” legislative republicans like McConnell who for a while gave some cover for it. Not only will McConnell have a “justification” for obstructing Biden at every turn, it will be expected of him by the rabid base that powers the GOP. For Biden to avoid the right wing caretaker role, he has to have break out legislation, executive orders or approaches to governing like what Lynn mentions that will deliver measurable change, excite the democratic base and keep them engaged going into the mid terms. He’s not going to get any help from McConnell with that. Any “bipartisan” legislation McConnell would agree to will be just enough for Biden and the democrats to say “we got stuff done” but nowhere near enough to have any measurable impact for the democratic base to get excited over, e.g. net win for the GOP and building the case for a mid term shellacking come 2022.