One of the most effective ways for businesses—especially startups—to grow is through mergers and acquisitions. But in today’s political climate, success is suspect, and growth is punished. In the piece below, Market Institute President Charles Sauer explains how antitrust enforcers at the FTC and DOJ are taking an increasingly aggressive Read more…
Populists on both the left and right often blame mergers and acquisitions for consolidating corporate power and harming small businesses. But as Market Institute President Charles Sauer argues in a new piece at RealClearMarkets, that narrative gets it exactly backward. Sauer points to Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp—deals frequently Read more…
In this piece at The Libertarian Institute, Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton calls out FCC Chair Brendan Carr for abandoning the First Amendment in pursuit of partisan content control. From threatening media mergers to pushing reinterpretations of Section 230, Carr’s agenda mirrors the regulatory overreach of Lina Khan’s “Khanservatism”—just Read more…
In a new piece for RealClearMarkets, Norm Singleton explores how the Trump administration’s antitrust team is embracing a troubling trend: using Lina Khan’s aggressive, big-government approach to target political opponents under the banner of fighting “wokeness” and Big Tech censorship. Far from restoring free-market principles, the rise of so-called “Khanservatives” Read more…
In a new article for RealClearMarkets, Market Institute President Charles Sauer sounds the alarm on the Senate’s confirmation of Abigail “Gail” Slater as Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Slater’s support for Lina Khan-style antitrust policies marks another win for the growing “Khanservative” movement—conservatives who’ve abandoned free markets Read more…
Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton’s latest article in RealClearMarkets examines President Trump’s decision to fire Democrat FTC commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter—an unprecedented move that could reshape the agency’s direction. Critics argue this was a political purge to dismantle Lina Khan’s legacy, while others see it as a Read more…
New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson’s first major initiative targets big tech’s content moderation practices under the guise of antitrust enforcement. But as Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton writes in RealClear Markets, this approach mirrors the same government overreach used by the Biden administration to pressure social media platforms into Read more…
In his successful bid to become Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson promised to end Lina Khan’s war on business. Yet, just weeks into his tenure, he’s keeping one of her most radical policies in place—the 2023 revised merger guidelines. As Market Institute Senior Fellow Norm Singleton explains Read more…
As Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan led an aggressive, ideologically driven campaign against businesses—one that often ignored consumer welfare in favor of government intervention. From reviving outdated laws like the Robinson-Patman Act to filing a record number of lawsuits (many of which failed), Khan’s tenure was marked Read more…
Under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division waged an aggressive campaign against mergers and business practices that, in reality, benefited consumers, workers, and competition. Often referred to as “neo-Brandeisian” antitrust, their approach was better described as bizarro antitrust—where blocking competition Read more…