America faces a problem of rising market concentration across the economy. Robust competition is the foundation of economic liberty, opportunity, and broadly shared prosperity in America. Yet competition doesn’t happen by accident: Experience teaches us that government has a vital role to play in reining in corporate power and securing open, competitive markets. Together with its tax cuts, deregulation, and attacks on worker power, the Trump administration has ushered in an era of monopoly power, throwing fuel on the fire of decades long attacks in the courts, agencies, and academia on the foundations of antitrust enforcement.
The evidence of competitive harm to America’s economy has been growing and is only worsening. From Big Tech, to Big Pharma, to Big Agriculture, the trends are clear. Corporate profits have risen while investment has decreased. Fewer firms are entering markets. Productivity growth has slowed, and wage growth continues to be weak.
Ultimately, countering corporate consolidation is about more than just dollars and cents. It also has enormous implications for economic opportunity and democracy. Dominant firms can abuse their market power to ice out rising competitors. And concentrated economic power entrenches political powers that are anathema to the interests of working families in a broadly shared middle class.
Please join the Center for American Progress Action Fund for a conversation on the state of competition in the U.S. economy and its implications in society with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and the Hon. Robert Reich. Sen. Klobuchar serves on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and is a ranking member of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Reich is a former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton.
Conversation:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Senate Judiciary Committee
Hon. Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley and former United States Secretary of Labor
Moderator:
Neera Tanden, CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund