Anti monopoly5/7/2023 ![]() Even after Jonathan Kanter was successfully appointed, Garland failed to provide Kanter with sufficient resources to enact an aggressive antitrust enforcement agenda. For instance, RDP has done substantial work criticizing Attorney General Merrick Garland’s interference in the operations of the DOJ Antitrust Division, including pushing Big Tech-aligned lawyers such as Renata Hesse and Susan Davies to lead the Antitrust Division. To hold the sway of revolvers in check, the Revolving Door Project also provides public pushback against officials who kowtow to corporations’ interests. On the whole, our research details how conflicts of interests at the FTC and ATR are a systemic obstacle to real anti-monopoly action. While her clear conflict of interest shocked onlookers, the many former government officials working for BigLaw and economic consulting firms suggest the problem is much larger than just one professor. One high-profile example we have shone a light on is Fiona Scott Morton, a Yale professor, former ATR chief economist, and consultant for Apple and Amazon. Perhaps the omission is tied to how respected officials and academics frequently and lucratively deploy their expertise at economic consulting firms that sell testimony to the government and merging parties alike. Yet as we explained in Washington Monthly in 2020, most calls for change don’t include closing the revolving door between ostensibly “career staff” at the agencies and corporate entities. Within antitrust regulators at both the leadership and staff level, there is a long history of these revolvers leveraging their federal experience to get new jobs at consulting companies and corporate BigLaw firms, just to turn around and use it to protect monopolists against the public interest they were once sworn to serve. Revolving Door Project tracks the former antitrust enforcers who use the “revolving door” to switch between public service jobs and corporate gigs. At RDP, we use our expertise and influence to contribute to the anti-monopoly movement. With his administration, President Biden has the opportunity to use executive branch power to rein in monopolies by directing his officials to pursue anti-monopoly policy across all economic sectors. As progressive and grassroots groups push for White House officials free of ties to powerful industries such as Big Tech, Big Ag, Big Oil, and more, the pushback against monopolists is gaining momentum. RDP’s work includes investigating nominees and appointees to important positions that enforce the nation’s antitrust laws and researching the capacity of those offices to fulfill their mandates. As part of the Revolving Door Project’s ongoing mission to ensure that the federal government works in the public interest and not as an extension of corporate interests, RDP has been consistently involved in scrutinizing executive regulatory bodies. The battle for ensuring the Biden administration avoids being riddled with corporate capture has been going on since before the inauguration.
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