OPINION:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar is no fan of the free market system. One of the Senate’s leading advocates for revising laws concerning antitrust, the Minnesota Democrat has been working tirelessly to bring American business under governmental control.
She’s not alone. Her bill, the “American Innovation and Choice Online Act” (S. 2992), applies to publicly traded companies with a $550 billion market capitalization and privately held companies with revenue over $30 billion. And it hits companies in sectors besides Big Tech, which both the left and right currently find to be a useful punching bag.
Some of the folks concerned about so-called online censorship have convinced themselves Ms. Klobuchar’s bill is the club that will threaten Big Tech into changing how it operates. But that’s only because they’re being willfully blind to the folly of letting federal regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission act as the gatekeepers protecting free speech.
Ms. Klobuchar’s bill is supported by some leading Republicans who know better. It would wipe out decades of judicial precedent set by what the senator argues in her ANTITRUST were conservative judges who hindered proper antitrust enforcement. Her proposed remedy, “a president who will, in addition to pursuing new legislation to change the laws, nominate judges and regulators who will take antitrust laws very seriously,” may just be what she has in mind for President Biden to do.
Antitrust is the backbone of populist progressivism and kissing cousin to socialism. Rather than have the government own the nation’s largest companies, her so-called reforms would let them be run de facto by bureaucratic fiat. For a country whose principal business “is business” — as a great man once said — the idea of Washington increasing its control over the private marketplace based on a company’s size will be the first step down the road to killing innovation, job creation and economic growth.
Throwing out the consensus approach to antitrust enforcement that relies on the consumer welfare standard out the window in favor of a dystopian nightmare of new rules and regulations would handcuff the generation of entrepreneurs, investors and inventors America must have to bring the total debt incurred during the COVID-19 lockdowns to a manageable level.
If you don’t believe the threat from Ms. Klobuchar’s bill is real, consider what Vermont Sen. Bernie Saunders has had to say about the need for a new approach to antitrust. “Our job,” he said of his ideological allies, is to “make certain that large mergers are only approved if they will not harm workers, consumers, our environment, and the economy.” That’s quite a statement from a man who’s never really had a real job or been responsible for meeting a payroll.
As Fordham University law professor and former New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout said, the plan is for government to make decisions best left to markets and managers. “In some industries, you might want to nationalize like health care,” she’s said. “You want to do regulation, nationalization, and break up all together.” It sounds like she’s auditioning to be chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
Lest there be any question, Ms. Klobuchar’s antitrust bill creates the framework people like Ms. Teachout could do at a future date to achieve their objective — and bring companies with much smaller market caps and far few users or customers under their regulatory purview. But because the effort is “bipartisan,” there’s too much of a chance it might get through.
With the Biden agenda blocked on so many fronts, giving Ms. Klobuchar, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president the chance to hit a winning buzzer-beater before the November elections would be a mistake from a policy perspective and tactically. Senate Republicans should not feel obligated to go along with a plot to give the Biden administration significant new regulatory authority so that it can tell the voters it accomplished something.
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