Why Joe Biden’s trustbusters have fallen short of their ambitions
AMERICA’S TOP trustbusters mean to make their policing presence felt. Lawyers, bankers and financiers now “recognise that there are cops on the beat…that we’re vigorously looking to protect the American public from illegal mergers,” says Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces consumer-protection and competition laws.
Whether Ms Khan, who became the youngest-ever chair of the FTC two years ago this month (she is 34), is a good or bad cop is a matter of fierce debate. Progressives applaud the greater scrutiny she has brought to companies’ conduct—including her latest lawsuit, announced on June 21st, against Amazon, for alleged deception involving its Prime subscription service. Corporate America loathes her more partisan, boisterous approach to merger enforcement. Others accuse her of treating all big firms as criminals and most mergers as offences. David Gelfand, a lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb who worked on antitrust in the Obama administration, compares the approach to “going into a neighbourhood and saying you have a crime problem, so you’re going to stop-and-frisk everybody”.
Joe Biden’s appointment of Ms Khan was a signal of seriousness about fighting corporate concentration. In 2021 the White House issued an executive order calling on agencies across government to focus on competition. It reckoned the dominance of a small number of firms in many markets meant higher prices and lower wages.
2023-06-21 06:00:54
Source from www.economist.com
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