Thread by @matthewstoller

1. I wrote up the current odd state of antitrust politics, where DC's biggest lobbying group - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has declared open war against Lina Khan and the anti-monopoly movement. mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-business…

2. This is not hyperbole. “It feels to the business community that the FTC has gone to war against us, and we have to go to war back,” said Chamber President and CEO Suzanne Clark, in the Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/articles/ftc-k…

3. The Chamber will be suing the FTC at every step, filing Freedom of Information Act requests, and setting up a war room to tell horror stories about Khan and the government's attempt to address dominant firms. mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-business…

4. Meanwhile Google has demanded new antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter recuse himself from the Google case, and its shill groups are going after Khan.

https://twitter.com/alliedantitrust/status/1461726241778814982?s=21

5. The whisper campaign starts with rumors pushed on CNBC and in the Wall Street Journal. cnbc.com/video/2021/07/…

6. The reason for the pushback is simple. Lina Khan is effective. She's already pushed Apple to let consumers repair their own equipment. And begun to undo irritating practices that prevent people from canceling subscriptions. apple.com/newsroom/2021/…

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

7. More importantly she's taking steps to deal with the massive merger wave unleashed by the Fed last year, and these steps worry that worry private equity and the antitrust bar so much that antitrust lawyers are calling for a coordinated crime spree.

8. Khan's enemies at the Federal Trade Commission, like @CSWilsonFTC, are fanning the flames because they are personally angry, and even making false allegations of misdeeds. Example:

https://twitter.com/CSWilsonFTC/status/1433865897895251969

9. The real opposition comes from the "Friends of Eric" coalition, led by Democrat @RepZoeLofgren and Republican @Jim_Jordan. Jordan is a corporatist who wants to help big tech, so he's distracting the GOP by framing Khan as a left-wing social justice warrior.

10. It's an insane and untrue accusation. Khan is responsible for the revival of the anti-monopoly movement on both sides of the aisle. Her 2017 article on Amazon's Antitrust Paradox has restructured the debate everywhere. yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-a…

11. And the corporatist faction of the GOP is being challenged by conservatives like @TomCottonAR.

https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1460635080821514245

12. There was even this super-bizarre moment which scrambled all partisan lines, with Ilhan Omar retweeting a Tucker Carlson segment on big tech and Khan. mediaite.com/politics/tucke…

13. Behind the conservative revolt against big tech is a crack-up in corporate America. Epic Games and Apple/Google are fighting over the app store, as are Roku, Match Group, and Tile. Visa and Amazon are tussling, etc. mattstoller.substack.com/p/roku-match-g…

14. It's not just big tech, the @GOPoversight just held a great forum chaired by @RepJamesComer on dominant health firms like CVS that are driving independent pharmacies out of business.

https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1460995793620455424

15. Strong conservative @RepJimBanks has perhaps the best anti-monopoly legislation in the entire health care sector, which would break up hospitals across the economy. banks.house.gov/news/documents…

16. Clarence Thomas is attacking Google's monopoly power. mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-clare…

16. A week ago, the Federalist Society, which dominates conservative legal thinking, had at their national convention a debate in which the topic was “RESOLVED: Concentrated corporate power is a greater threat to individual freedom than government power.” mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-business…

17. So what? Well, with the GOP poised to take over Congress, these debates matter. And right now @Jim_Jordan has made it clear he will block all attempts to break up big tech through stronger antitrust law. washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…

18. If this were the 1990s, 2000s or 2010s, the GOP wave would mean a radical roll-back of the antitrust agenda. But instead it means that the fight moves to the right and to corporate America. And the outcome is not as predictable as one might think. mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-business…

19. Jordan will have massive institutional power within the GOP Congress. His voters, however wouldn't like it if they knew he was on the side of big tech. But they mostly don't know.

20. Same with the U.S. Chamber, which is likely being funded by Google to do this. Its executives are hoping that its other members, from Disney to Allstate, don't notice that it has declared war in their name against antitrust.

21. In the meantime, Khan will continue to wield the authority of the FTC to shrink the power of dominant firms. And the Chamber will sue at every step.

mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-business…