Market Institute President Charles Sauer has a new piece out in the Washington Examiner on a new executive order by the Biden administration on mergers and acquisitions.
“Compared to the craziness and unpredictability of the last administration, the Biden administration is fairly calm. One might say it’s even boring.
But the president is more than a figurehead. When it comes to policy, the Biden administration still needs to be held accountable.
Take Biden’s recently proposed executive order that would attack competition. The Biden administration is selling the order as a way to bring large competitors under control. However, the proposals would actually help out some large competitors while hurting others. They hurt the merger and acquisition market, for example, making innovation almost impossible for smaller innovators who rely on mergers and acquisitions as an exit.
The order also includes language that would make injunctions almost impossible. Without an injunction, inventors can’t stop big technology companies from just using their technology without permission. They might win a case after the fact, but the absence of injunctions would allow large technology companies to steal without repercussions.
he problems with this executive order are evident, but the real issue is that changes such as these are hard to report. There won’t be much of a change immediately. Prices might drop, but innovation rates won’t change right away either because there are innovations that are already in the pipeline. The largest technology companies are working several generations ahead. Some smaller innovators are trying to work further ahead than that. The problems only start showing up when it is too late. They start showing up when China starts overtaking us, or when Huawei takes the lead in network speeds and reliability (espionage concerns aside!).
Biden should find a way to increase innovation. Increased innovation is how you force big market incumbents to continue competing. Increased innovation helps everyone. Give more strength to patents, create a stronger patent office instead of a weaker patent office, and celebrate innovation instead of attacking it.
Between budget-busting proposals and deal-breaking blunders, the Biden administration is slowly trying to pick apart the economy in some of the most devastating ways possible. But the fix is easy: Support innovators. It might be more boring than attacking large companies, but it is what is best for everyone.”
Read the article in full over at the Washington Examiner by clicking here.
