SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
farm action
FTC-DOJ Merger Guidelines Aim to 'Restore Competition and Strengthen Democracy'
One expert called the guidance "a game-changer for antitrust enforcement, incorporating decades of new learnings and thousands of public comments from working families and small businesses."
Dec 18, 2023
Antitrust campaigners and experts on Monday celebrated the Biden administration's new guidelines for mergers and acquisitions, which supporters say will "restore competition and strengthen democracy."
Farm Action co-founder and chief strategy officer Joe Maxwell commended the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) "for delivering on their commitment to restore competition to our economy."
"For more than 40 years, the merger guidelines have been void of a review for competition," he said. "During this period of time, unprecedented concentration across U.S. markets has driven farmers and small businesses out of business."
"The new guidelines provide a roadmap to bring first principles of the antitrust laws into the 21st century."
Erik Peinert, research manager and editor at the American Economic Liberties Project, declared that "the finalized merger guidelines are a game-changer for antitrust enforcement, incorporating decades of new learnings and thousands of public comments from working families and small businesses."
"After almost 50 years of significant underenforcement, we're thrilled to see the antitrust agencies make a comprehensive update to the merger guidelines, and look forward to seeing them vigorously enforced," he continued. "The new guidelines provide a roadmap to bring first principles of the antitrust laws into the 21st century."
"Previous guidelines ignored or underappreciated the harms from practices like vertical mergers and serial acquisitions, as well as the harms to workers," he highlighted. "A generation of these deals has suppressed worker pay, increased prices, and embrittled our supply chains."
Open Markets Institute legal director Sandeep Vaheesan also praised the agencies behind the new guidelines, which he said "put fealty to law front and center again and seek to implement congressional intent, instead of their own ideological preferences."
"By relying on market share tests for deciding the legality of certain mergers, the new guidelines are more faithful to the Clayton Act than the 2010 horizontal merger guidelines were," Vaheesan explained. "They are also more in accord with empirical research on the effects of mergers and acquisitions, which finds that corporate consolidation can harm democratic balances and institutions, as well as workers, producers, and consumers."
"In our comments on the draft guidelines, we called on the DOJ and the FTC, in the final guidelines, to adopt lower market share tests to cover consolidations outside the most highly concentrated markets and to reject unequivocally an efficiencies defense for presumptively illegal mergers," he noted. "Although the agencies stuck with their original approach in the final document, these guidelines are a material improvement over the status quo and will help the two agencies do a better job of stopping and deterring harmful corporate consolidation going forward."
The guidelines released Monday reflect feedback the agencies received after putting out a draft in July.
FTC Chair Lina Khan expressed gratitude for "the thousands of comments submitted by American workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, farmers, business owners, and other members of the public," stressing that "this input directly informed the guidelines and allowed us to pursue this work with a deeper understanding of the real-life stakes of merger enforcement."
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the guidelines "provide transparency" into Justice Department action and pledged that the DOJ "will continue to vigorously enforce the laws that safeguard competition and protect all Americans."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Deadly Dust Storm in Illinois Blamed on Shortsighted Industrial Farming Methods
"This tragedy should be a wake-up call to Congress to take action in the 2023 Farm Bill," said one advocacy group. "We urge them to shift funds toward practices like cover cropping and conservation buffers, which protect soil from erosion."
May 02, 2023
Agricultural policy experts on Tuesday said the deadly dust storm that led to "zero visibility" for highway drivers this week in Illinois should be a "wake-up call" for lawmakers as advocates fight against industrial farming practices.
A day after at least six people were killed and more than 30 were injured in a pileup on Interstate 55 outside Springfield, the research and advocacy group Farm Action said the dust storm may have been driven by the chronic erosion of soil in rural areas, which has resulted as agribusiness pushes practices such as monocropping—a profitable method which can trigger the depletion of soil nutrients and the weakening of soil.
"Incidents like these are a tragic consequence of the shortsighted practices demanded by the monopoly corporations that control our agriculture system," said the organization in a statement. "Industrial practices which limit crop rotation in favor of monocropping and heavy herbicide application have resulted in unprecedented soil erosion and severe weather events—which cost us not only our agricultural system's resilience but human life itself."
Monocropping became more common in the middle of the 20th century, and herbicide applications increased from 18% of crops in 1960 to 76% of crops in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, further eroding soil.
Along with Farm Action, experts including Matt Wallenstein, chief soil scientist for gricultural company Syngenta, pointed to profit-driven industrial farming methods as a possible cause of the dust storm.
"Let's take this as a wake-up call to prioritize regenerative agriculture practices that can help prevent soil erosion and build healthier soils," said Wallenstein.
\u201cAnother example (\ud83d\ude41) to emphasize why we need to proritize regenerative agriculture, use of cover crops, grasses, reduced till etc not only add soil Carbon but might prevent these tragic dust storms, soil erosion etc. \n\nhttps://t.co/FSuxO9pFHY\n\n@regeneration_in @soil4climate\u201d— JAY NEPAL (@JAY NEPAL) 1682986328
Farm Action has called on lawmakers to include in the 2023 Farm Bill provisions that would offer subsidized insurance programs and disaster payments for farmers and companies that use regenerative farming practices that limit mechanical disturbances and reduce the use of chemical herbicides and fertilizers.
Methods include "cover cropping," or planting crops in soil that would otherwise be bare after cash crops are harvested, in order to keep living roots in the soil; moving livestock between pastures for grazing; "no-till farming," in which the soil is left intact rather than plowed; and conservation buffers such as hedgerows "that act as windbreaks and habitat for beneficial organisms," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"The deadly dust storm was preventable. Our staff mourns the abrupt and senseless loss of life, and our hearts go out to the communities of central Illinois," said Farm Action. "This tragedy should be a wake-up call to Congress to take action in the 2023 Farm Bill. We urge them to shift funds toward practices like cover cropping and conservation buffers, which protect soil from erosion."
"If these sustainable practices were scaled up and supported by U.S. farm policies," the group added, "we would see a safer and more resilient system emerge."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Warren Calls For 'Landing the Plane Not Crashing It' After Fed Hikes Rate Despite Cooling Inflation
Another critic warned that "while the Fed continues to stick to their obsession with job-killing interest rate hikes, the livelihoods of working families are on the line."
Feb 01, 2023
Progressive economists and advocates on Wednesday blasted the U.S. Federal Reserve for hiking the federal funds rate an eighth consecutive time despite fears of a recession and impacts on working people.
"With today's rate hike, the Fed is pushing us dangerously close to an unnecessary recession that would spell disaster for low-wage workers, workers of color, and vulnerable communities," the Groundwork Collaborativedeclared. "Workers and families shouldn't have to pay the price for inflation."
The Federal Open Market Committee rose the benchmark interest rate to a range of 4.5%-4.75%. The 25-basis-point increase was the smallest hike since March and came amid signs that the U.S. economy is cooling off.
"Chair Powell should pause his interest rate hikes and remember his dual mandate: Fight inflation without throwing millions out of work."
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that "while recent developments are encouraging, we will need substantially more evidence to be confident that inflation is on a sustained downward path," so "we expect ongoing hikes will be appropriate."
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a major critic of the wave of increases, tweeted that "we want to bring down inflation, but that means landing the plane not crashing it. Chair Powell should pause his interest rate hikes and remember his dual mandate: Fight inflation without throwing millions out of work."
University of California, Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explained in a recent video that "the Fed is wrongly obsessing about a wage-price spiral—wage gains pushing up prices—when it should be worried about a profit-price spiral—corporate profits driving up prices."
\u201cThe Federal Reserve is continuing to raise interest rates in an effort to slow the economy. \n\nLower-wage workers and the poor bear most of the pain of these rate hikes.\n\nMeanwhile, corporate executives, Wall Street, and the wealthy get away scot-free.\u201d— Inequality Media (@Inequality Media) 1675280125
Longtime opponents of the Fed's strategy on Wednesday renewed calls for not only the U.S. central bank to halt its hikes but also federal lawmakers to get to work battling corporate greed.
Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.Us, warned that "while the Fed continues to stick to their obsession with job-killing interest rate hikes, the livelihoods of working families are on the line."
"Key indicators show inflation is slowing as our economic recovery remains fragile, which means the Fed's higher rates are only pushing the economy closer to a recession," she said. "Meanwhile, Fed economists have admitted corporations are the real culprit of high costs yet have still refused to relax rate hikes. It's time for the Fed to back down and let policymakers rein in corporate greed rather than risk it all on another rate increase."
\u201cRoses are red \ud83c\udf39\nThe Fed wants a recession \ud83d\udcc9\nJerome Powell's gotta stop \ud83d\uded1\nWith this job loss obsession \ud83d\ude29\n\nSlower rate hikes are not enough - the Fed needs to hit pause before we tip over the edge and put millions of workers at risk of joblessness.\u201d— Rakeen Mabud (@Rakeen Mabud) 1675280991
Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl, former managing director at BlackRock, offered a similar critique of Fed policy.
"Today's interest rate hike by the Fed is bad news for the American economy. It's true that raising rates is meant to solve inflation, but that doesn't mean it's the correct course to take right now. Raising rates may cool inflation, but it does so by making everything from mortgages to credit card payments more expensive, which hurts those already suffering the most in today's cost-of-living crisis," he said. "In this case, the cure may be worse than the disease."
"If the federal government is truly committed to slowing inflation without heaping extra pain on the vulnerable, they should go after greedy, ultraprofitable corporations and their C-suite executives," he argued. "Many corporations have used the hype over inflation in recent months to raise prices on consumers and line their pockets. Why else would corporate profits be at a 70-year high?"
"Many corporations have used the hype over inflation in recent months to raise prices on consumers and line their pockets."
Pearl pointed out that "everyone's been complaining lately about how expensive eggs are. The fact that Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the U.S., experienced a 10-fold increase in their profits over the last year might just have something to do with it."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Farm Action raised concerns about "apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices by dominant producers of eggs" and urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the sector, "prosecute any violations of the antitrust laws it finds within, and ultimately, get the American people their money back."
Pearl said Wednesday that "the Fed raising interest rates won't do anything to stop corporations like Cal-Maine from exploiting American consumers, unless they raise them so much as to cause a massive rise in unemployment."
"It is hard to see a scenario where this kind of action does not cause immense pain to the worst off in America," he added. "The Fed needs to back off, and let Congress step in to tackle corporate greed."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular