In today’s monopoly round-up, I’ll do a summary of market-power news, the good and the bad, for paid subscribers. But first I want to focus on the debates happening every day on CNBC and in the business press over whether Kamala Harris should remove Biden antitrust enforcers if she wins.
To that end, a few days ago, I published an op-ed in the New York Times on what Kamala Harris thinks about corporate power. She hasn’t said much, offering some reasonable if vague words on the campaign trail about price gouging, and pledging to come out with a detailed policy platform this coming week. The signs, however, suggest she’s going to shift antitrust back towards a framework of deference to the interests of large corporations.
The subtext of my piece was that three Democratic billionaires - LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, IAC Chair Barry Diller, and Starwood’s Barry Sternlicht - publicly demanded that Harris fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Hoffman in particular is very close with Harris, a longtime fundraiser who is so trusted he offers her VP suggestions. She just raised $14 million at an event he co-hosted (along with Google board member John Doerr.) My concern wasn’t just about Hoffman, who was interviewed by Jake Tapper over his inappropriate commentary; Harris’s closest advisor is Uber general counsel and former Obama Justice official Tony West.
Multiple unions, politicians, and consumer groups reacted to Hoffman’s attack on Khan by standing with her; vulnerable politicians like Nevada Senator Jackie Rosen are eager to be associated with the enforcer over her opposition to the Kroger-Albertsons supermarket merger.
On CNBC and Bloomberg, every day there’s a discussion about the election, often with Khan as the subject. For instance, the day my New York Times piece came out, Maryland Governor Wes Moore - who is a close ally of Harris - was asked on CNBC about what Kamala Harris will do about antitrust/regulation. And his answer is that she is going to change it from the Biden framework towards a more friendly partnership between government and big business.
Surprisingly, the next day, investment bank dealmaking legend Roger Altman at Evercore said it is now harder for Harris to get rid of antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter and Lina Khan, because “high profile Silicon Valley types clamoring publicly” have “fired up the progressives.” Basically, Altman is angry that billionaires were so public, because knifing populist regulators is supposed to happen behind closed doors. Now, he says, it’ll likely take longer.
On Bloomberg TV, Larry Summers made the same point as Altman, saying he wishes Lina Khan were fired but that doing so “at the behest of billionaires” is precisely the wrong way to do it.
The ‘Will Harris fire Khan?’ is pretty much Andrew Ross Sorkin’s political beat. Just as pundits on MSNBC or Fox News discuss the state of the election, Sorkin and finance pundits like New York Post’s Lydia Moynihan gossip about the future of Khan.
The only one speaking up in defense of Khan is… Republican J.D. Vance, who today went on Face the Nation and said she’s smart for going at big tech, and called for breaking up Google. Khan, in other words, is just a symbol of a different approach to governing big business.
Basically, while most activists and politically engaged hobbyists have their electoral discourse over the foibles of the different candidates, big business and populists are having their own shadow campaign paralleling the election. Only this one, which you can see on CNBC, among union leaders, in the business press, and among pharmacists, Silicon Valley elites, and small business types, is entirely about whether big business will take back its place as our rightful government.
If it does, well, the consolidation wave, algorithmic price fixing, and surveillance is going to ramp up at startling speed. And whichever politician is in the White House is going to be in serious trouble.
And now the monopoly round-up for paid subscribers. But first first I have a job announcement. I need someone to help solve a mystery. In about a month, a new Google antitrust trial is going to start, this one centered on the search giant’s monopolization of ad money that used to go to newspapers. I am hiring someone to cover it for BIG and for our sister site, Big Tech on Trial.
It’s a temporary gig that will last about a month and a half. The courtroom is near Washington, D.C., in Alexandria. If you’re interested in antitrust, and have a background in journalism, send me a resume and writing sample. It’s going to be chalk full of exhibits like this one, a 2017 internal Google planning document which Jason Kint shows is their scheme to divert revenue that used to hire journalists, to boost housing values in Palo Alto. Our last attempt to cover a trial was great, I’m hoping to replicate it.
