Antitrust & Corporate Power

This policy makes pay-for-delay deals — where a brand-name drugmaker pays a generic competitor to stay off the market — and patent evergreening (extending drug patents through minor modifications) automatically illegal under antitrust law. These tactics delay cheaper generic drugs from reaching patients by years or decades, costing lives and billions of dollars.

Pay-for-delay pharmaceutical settlements and patent evergreening are per se antitrust violations

Pay-for-delay agreements — in which brand-name pharmaceutical manufacturers pay generic competitors to delay market entry — are per se violations of antitrust law. No rule-of-reason balancing is permitted: a payment from a brand manufacturer to a generic competitor to stay off the market is a naked market allocation agreement, and the patent context does not immunize it. The Supreme Court's FTC v. Actavis decision (2013) established that reverse payment settlements are subject to antitrust scrutiny;^[1] this platform goes further by treating them as per se violations. Patent evergreening — filing minor reformulation patents solely to extend exclusivity beyond the original compound patent's life — constitutes anticompetitive conduct that must be challenged as a systematic abuse. Generic entry following patent expiration delivers price reductions of 80–90%; any practice that delays or forecloses this structural competition mechanism constitutes consumer harm measured in tens of billions of dollars annually. The FTC must treat pay-for-delay and evergreening as per se violations and refer willful violations for criminal prosecution under Sherman Act Section 1.

1. FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 570 U.S. 136 (2013). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-416_m5n0.pdf ↩

This policy makes pharmaceutical mergers designed to eliminate pipeline competition — known as 'killer acquisitions,' where a large company buys a smaller one to shelve its competing drug — subject to criminal and civil antitrust enforcement. Buying a promising drug company just to bury its product keeps patients on expensive existing drugs rather than better or cheaper alternatives.

Pharmaceutical mergers designed to eliminate pipeline competition are killer acquisitions subject to criminal and civil enforcement

Pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions that eliminate competition in drug development pipelines are presumptively anticompetitive and must be blocked or unwound unless the acquirer demonstrates affirmatively that the acquisition will accelerate development and benefit patients. The practice of acquiring potential competitors to terminate their pipeline drugs — rather than to develop them — is an antitrust violation subject to criminal and civil enforcement. Research by Cunningham, Ederer, and Ma (2021) found that approximately 6.7% of pharmaceutical acquisitions are "killer acquisitions" — structured to eliminate pipeline candidates that would compete with the acquirer's existing products by terminating development after the acquisition closes.^[1] This is not market failure; it is a deliberate strategy to extend monopoly pricing by paying to eliminate the competitive threat rather than to improve the product. The burden rests with the acquirer: any acquisition of a company with a pipeline candidate competing with the acquirer's existing products is presumptively a killer acquisition and must be blocked absent affirmative proof of accelerated development benefit to patients. Drug prices are the direct and documentable consequence of this enforcement failure.

1. Cunningham, C., Ederer, F., & Ma, S. (2021). Killer acquisitions. Journal of Political Economy, 129(3), 649–702. https://doi.org/10.1086/712506 ↩

This policy requires the immediate structural separation of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that have merged with health insurers and pharmacies, and directs regulators to pursue elimination of PBMs as a business model. PBMs are middlemen who extract fees from every drug transaction while serving no clinical purpose — their market power drives up costs for patients and insurers.

PBM vertical integration with insurers and pharmacies must be immediately structurally separated; PBM elimination must be pursued

Pharmacy Benefit Managers exist as intermediaries that extract value from drug transactions without improving patient outcomes or reducing net drug costs. The structural conflict is the cause of the harm, not a side effect: the three dominant PBMs — CVS Caremark (owned by CVS Health, which also owns the CVS pharmacy chain and Aetna insurance), Express Scripts (owned by Cigna insurance), and OptumRx (owned by UnitedHealth Group, which also operates Optum physician practices) — are vertically integrated with the very entities they nominally negotiate against. An entity that simultaneously controls the insurer, the PBM, and the pharmacy chain faces no competitive pressure to reduce drug costs and every financial incentive to maximize extraction. The FTC's 2024 interim staff report documented that the three dominant PBMs extracted $7.3 billion in excess spread pricing markups and marked up 22% of specialty generic drug claims by more than 1,000% above acquisition cost.^[1] PBMs that are owned by — or under common ownership with — pharmacies, insurers, or drug manufacturers are categorically prohibited; structural separation of CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx from their parent conglomerates must be compelled immediately under antitrust enforcement authority, without waiting for further legislative action. Congress must seriously pursue the elimination of the PBM model entirely, transferring its administrative functions — formulary management, rebate negotiation, claims processing — to transparent, publicly accountable drug pricing infrastructure. Until elimination, PBMs are prohibited from spread pricing, clawbacks against independent pharmacies, formulary design that prioritizes rebates over clinical outcomes, and any self-dealing that steers patients toward affiliated entities.

1. Federal Trade Commission. (2024, July). Pharmacy benefit managers: The powerful middlemen inflating drug costs and squeezing main street pharmacies (Interim Staff Report). https://www.ftc.gov/reports/pharmacy-benefit-managers-report ↩

This policy establishes that pharmaceutical patent thickets — where a company piles dozens of overlapping patents around a single drug to block generic competition long after the original patent expires — constitute a per se (automatically illegal) antitrust violation. Patent thickets can delay generic competition by decades, keeping drug prices artificially high and out of reach for patients.

Pharmaceutical patent thickets are deliberate anticompetitive conduct constituting a per se antitrust violation

The deliberate filing of multiple overlapping patents on incrementally modified formulations, delivery mechanisms, or manufacturing processes — with the purpose of erecting an intellectual property thicket that delays generic and biosimilar competition beyond what any single valid patent would justify — is anticompetitive conduct per se. This is not legitimate innovation; it is a strategy to extend monopoly pricing by accumulating secondary patents that individually would not block generic entry but collectively impose prohibitive litigation costs on generic entrants. The FTC and DOJ must actively audit patent thicket strategies in high-cost drug categories, use antitrust enforcement authority to compel licensing, challenge weak patents through inter partes review, and penalize manufacturers who maintain thickets built on patents the manufacturer has reason to know are invalid or unenforceable. Manufacturers who file patents solely to delay generic competition — without genuine innovation — are engaged in fraud on the patent system and in unlawful monopolization under Sherman Act Section 2. The public formulary authority established under the Inflation Reduction Act must be extended and used aggressively in conjunction with antitrust enforcement to address thicket-protected drugs.

This policy presumes that banking megamergers that reduce local and regional competition are anti-competitive and should be blocked. When banks consolidate, local branches close, small businesses lose access to credit, and communities are left without adequate financial services.

Banking megamergers that reduce local and regional competition are presumptively prohibited

Mergers between large banks that reduce competition in local and regional deposit, lending, and small-business banking markets are presumptively prohibited. Bank merger review must analyze local market concentration — not merely national market share — because banking competition operates at the community level, and consolidation directly harms small businesses, low-income households, and communities that lose branches and community lending relationships. The post-2008 consolidation trend — driven in part by emergency acquisitions facilitated by regulators during the 2008 financial crisis — has left the four largest U.S. banks holding over 40% of total domestic deposits.^[1] The 2008 crisis was itself in significant part a product of the concentration that prior merger approvals had enabled: institutions that were "too big to fail" were too big because regulators had permitted successive consolidating mergers on the theory that larger institutions were more efficient and stable. The opposite proved true. Proposed megamergers in banking are presumptively anticompetitive and must be blocked absent clear, concrete evidence of competitive benefit that cannot be achieved through organic growth. The post-2008 consolidation trend must be reversed, not extended.

1. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. (2011). The financial crisis inquiry report: Final report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States. U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf ↩

This policy requires that too-big-to-fail financial conglomerates be structurally separated into independent commercial banking and investment banking entities. When the same bank holds everyday depositors' savings and makes high-risk speculative investments, taxpayers end up bailing out the failures.

Too-big-to-fail financial conglomerates must be structurally separated into independent commercial and investment banking entities

Financial institutions whose failure would require taxpayer rescue must be subject to mandatory structural separation of retail banking, investment banking, and insurance operations. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed the Glass-Steagall structural firewall between commercial and investment banking;^[1] within a decade, the resulting conglomerates produced the 2008 financial crisis, requiring $700 billion in authorized public bailouts and triggering the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression.^[2] The implicit public subsidy of "too big to fail" status constitutes a market distortion that capital requirements alone cannot cure: an institution that knows it will be bailed out faces no market discipline for systemic risk-taking, and no private actor can adequately price that public backstop. Structural separation — requiring separately capitalized and separately governed commercial and investment banking entities — eliminates the subsidy and restores market discipline. No financial institution may operate as both a federally insured depository institution and a systemically significant investment bank without full structural separation, separate capitalization, and independent governance. This is a structural requirement, not a behavioral one: behavioral remedies and capital surcharges have failed to eliminate the systemic risk created by the conglomerate model.

1. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Pub. L. No. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338 (1999). https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/senate-bill/900 ↩
2. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-343, 122 Stat. 3765 (2008). https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/1424 ↩

This policy prohibits institutional investors from simultaneously owning large stakes in competing firms in concentrated industries — a practice known as common ownership — which research shows suppresses competition. When the same Wall Street fund owns all the major airlines, none of them have a financial incentive to compete aggressively on price.

Institutional cross-ownership of competing firms in concentrated industries is prohibited

Institutional investors, asset managers, and private equity sponsors are prohibited from simultaneously holding significant equity stakes in competing firms within concentrated industries. This is not a case for "enhanced review" — it is a structural prohibition. Common ownership of competing firms is not passive investing; it is a structural mechanism that softens competition and raises prices by aligning the financial interests of nominally competing firms within a single investor's portfolio. Economic research has established that this effect is real and measurable: Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu (2018) found that common ownership by the same institutional investors in major U.S. airlines — including routes served by carriers in which the same institutions held significant stakes — was associated with 3–11% higher ticket prices compared to routes without common ownership, controlling for market structure.^[1] Elhauge's horizontal shareholding theory establishes the mechanism: an investor holding stakes in multiple competing firms in the same market has financial incentives to prefer that those firms compete less aggressively, and managers of those firms have incentives to respond to that preference regardless of whether any explicit coordination occurs.^[2] The current approach — evaluating common ownership case-by-case — is structurally inadequate because the harm is cumulative and diffuse, not detectable in individual transactions. No institutional investor may hold more than a de minimis equity stake in more than one firm that competes directly in a highly concentrated market (defined as HHI ≥ 2,500 post-merger equivalent). This prohibition applies to BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, and all institutional investors currently holding simultaneous significant stakes in competing firms in banking, healthcare, airlines, telecommunications, and other concentrated industries. Asset managers operating index funds spanning entire industries must divest competitive stakes or face structural divestiture orders.

1. Azar, J., Schmalz, M., & Tecu, I. (2018). Anticompetitive effects of common ownership. Journal of Political Economy, 126(2), 467–505. https://doi.org/10.1086/699976 ↩
2. Elhauge, E. (2016). Horizontal shareholding. Harvard Law Review, 129(5), 1267–1317. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-129/horizontal-shareholding/ ↩

This policy presumes that hospital mergers that eliminate regional competition are anti-competitive and must be blocked. Hospital mergers consistently lead to higher prices for patients and insurers while cutting services, especially in communities with few alternatives.

Hospital mergers eliminating regional competition are presumptively anticompetitive and must be blocked

Hospital system mergers that eliminate direct competitors in a regional market are presumptively anticompetitive and must be blocked unless the merging parties demonstrate with concrete evidence that the combination will produce patient benefits that cannot be achieved through less restrictive means. The burden of proof rests entirely with the merging hospitals. The industrial organization literature on hospital markets has documented consistently that mergers in concentrated regional markets are associated with price increases of 20–40% with no corresponding improvement in quality or access outcomes.^[1] The Federal Trade Commission has successfully challenged multiple hospital mergers on exactly this evidentiary record, and the pattern is now sufficiently established that the presumption must be codified, not relitigated in each case. No regional hospital merger should be approved where it would leave a market with fewer than three independently competitive hospital systems. Already-completed mergers that have produced documented price increases without quality improvements must be subject to retroactive review and potential structural unwinding through divestiture orders.

1. Gaynor, M., Ho, K., & Town, R. J. (2015). The industrial organization of health-care markets. Journal of Economic Literature, 53(2), 235–284. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.53.2.235 ↩

This policy categorically prohibits vertical integration between health insurers, hospitals, and physician practices — preventing a single entity from controlling both what care is covered and who delivers it. When your insurer owns your hospital and your doctor's practice, both your financial interests and your health decisions are subject to the same entity's profit motive.

Insurer-hospital-physician vertical integration is categorically prohibited

No entity may simultaneously own or exercise operational control over health insurance underwriting, hospital or clinical facility operations, and physician or clinical staffing in the same market. This vertical structure can never serve the public interest. No behavioral remedy can address a conflict of interest produced by the ownership structure itself: an insurer that also owns the hospital and employs the physician has every financial incentive to deny care, limit referrals, steer patients toward high-margin in-house services, and suppress independent medical judgment. The patient becomes a captive unit of revenue extraction, not a person whose health is the enterprise's objective. The conflict cannot be managed through conduct rules or compliance programs because the conflict is structural: the same corporate parent captures the insurance premium, controls access to care, employs the clinician, and owns the facility. Every layer of the care decision serves the same financial interest. Existing vertically integrated health conglomerates — including UnitedHealth Group/Optum's integration of insurer, PBM, and physician practice ownership; CVS Health's integration of insurance, pharmacy, and clinical services; and similar structures — must be structurally broken up through divestiture orders. New vertical integration across insurance, hospital, and physician staffing layers is prohibited regardless of claimed efficiencies, market share, or geographic scope. This is a categorical rule, not a totality-of-circumstances analysis.

This policy prohibits private equity firms from using leveraged buyouts — debt-financed acquisitions — to take over healthcare entities. When a private equity firm loads a hospital with debt to finance its own purchase, patient care is cut in order to service that debt.

LBO-financed private equity acquisition of healthcare entities is structurally prohibited

Private equity acquisition of healthcare entities through leveraged buyout financing is prohibited. Healthcare is an essential service that is structurally incompatible with LBO-financed ownership: the debt loading, dividend recapitalization, and short-term asset extraction inherent in the PE business model produce predictable and documented harm to patients, workers, and communities. The evidence base on private equity healthcare ownership is now sufficient to require structural prohibition, not merely enhanced review or consumer-harm balancing. A 2023 systematic review of 55 studies published in BMJ found that private equity acquisition of healthcare entities was consistently associated with increased costs, reduced staffing levels, and no improvement in quality outcomes across the range of healthcare settings studied.^[1] Private equity acquisition of physician medical groups — which reached over 8,000 practices acquired between 2012 and 2019 — is associated with significant increases in commercial prices and changes in care intensity that do not correspond to clinical need.^[2] The 2019 closure of Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia following private equity acquisition — leaving a 496-bed teaching hospital serving low-income patients permanently shuttered while the acquirer extracted real estate value — is the paradigmatic case of LBO incompatibility with essential healthcare delivery. Private equity's business model requires extraction: debt loaded onto the acquired entity must be serviced, and in healthcare that servicing is paid by patients and workers. LBO-financed acquisition of hospitals, physician practices, nursing homes, behavioral health facilities, emergency medicine and radiology staffing, and other healthcare entities is prohibited. Private equity sponsors must bear joint-and-several liability for harms resulting from post-acquisition debt loading, staff reductions, and facility closures. The Stop Wall Street Looting Act framework — joint-and-several liability on PE sponsors, carried interest taxed as ordinary income, ban on dividend recapitalization from essential service entities — must be enacted as the minimum legislative response.^[3]

1. [Author et al.] (2023). Evaluating trends in private equity ownership and impacts on health outcomes, costs, and quality: Systematic review. BMJ, 382, bmj-2023-075244. https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2023-075244 ↩
2. Zhu, J. M., Hua, L. M., & Polsky, D. (2021). Private equity acquisitions of physician medical groups. JAMA, 326(14), 1440–1442. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.12302 ↩
3. U.S. Congress. (2024). Stop Wall Street Looting Act, H.R. 9985, 118th Congress. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9985/text/ih ↩

This policy establishes that a single conglomerate simultaneously controlling AI computing infrastructure, foundation model training, and product deployment constitutes a structural competition violation. If one company controls the computers needed to train AI, the AI models themselves, and the products that use those models, it can lock out all competitors from every layer of the AI economy.

Vertical integration of AI compute infrastructure, foundation model training, and deployment by the same conglomerate is a structural competition violation

The vertical integration of compute infrastructure, foundation model training, and AI deployment capabilities in the hands of the same technology conglomerates constitutes a structural competition violation subject to mandatory antitrust remedy, including structural separation. Microsoft's deep investment in and operational integration with OpenAI, Google's ownership of DeepMind, and Amazon's substantial investment in Anthropic represent the same structure as other prohibited vertical integrations: firms that control essential input infrastructure — hyperscale cloud compute — simultaneously controlling the dependent product layer — AI foundation models and deployment services — foreclose independent AI developers from the infrastructure inputs required to compete.^[1] This is not passive investment; it is vertical foreclosure of an emerging essential infrastructure stack. The concentration of AI capability in compute-integrated conglomerates creates structural barriers to entry that independent developers, academic institutions, and open-source communities cannot overcome through ordinary market mechanisms. The FTC and DOJ must treat AI market structure as a vertical integration problem — applying structural separation principles where compute-model integration forecloses competitive AI development. Exclusive or preferential compute arrangements between cloud providers and their affiliated AI models are per se anticompetitive input foreclosure mechanisms and are prohibited.

1. Khan, L. M. (2017). Amazon's antitrust paradox. Yale Law Journal, 126(3), 710–805. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox ↩

This policy prohibits exclusive arrangements between dominant AI model providers and cloud computing platforms, treating them as per se (automatically illegal) mechanisms that block competitors from accessing essential inputs. Locking the most capable AI models exclusively to one cloud provider means competitors cannot access the best tools, cementing the dominant companies' position for years.

Exclusive AI model-cloud arrangements are per se input foreclosure mechanisms and are prohibited

Exclusive or preferential arrangements between AI model developers and cloud computing providers that raise rivals' costs or foreclose competing AI developers from accessing necessary compute infrastructure constitute input foreclosure and are prohibited as per se anticompetitive where compute is essential infrastructure. A dominant cloud provider that grants preferential pricing, reserved capacity, or privileged access to an affiliated AI developer while withholding equivalent terms from independent developers is engaged in the same conduct as a railroad refusing to carry competitors' freight: denying access to essential infrastructure inputs to foreclose downstream competition. Compute access at a competitive price is a necessary condition for independent AI development; without it, market structure in AI is determined by investment relationships with cloud providers, not by the quality or originality of the AI development work. These arrangements must be treated as per se violations — not subjected to rule-of-reason balancing that invites years of litigation while foreclosure continues. Cloud providers with dominant compute market positions must offer equivalent pricing, capacity, and access terms to all AI developers regardless of investment or partnership relationships with the cloud provider's corporate family.

This policy requires structural separation between dominant AI companies and their control of training data pipelines, treating that control as a form of essential input foreclosure. The company that controls what data AI systems learn from has enormous power to determine what AI can do — and who can build it.

Dominant AI firms' control of training data pipelines is essential input foreclosure requiring structural separation

Control of training data pipelines by dominant AI firms — including proprietary data collection at scale unavailable to competitors, exclusive data licensing agreements that prevent rivals from training competitive models, and vertical integration of content platforms with AI model development — constitutes essential input control of the same type as control of physical infrastructure. Data is not a neutral or freely replicable resource: at the scale required to train frontier AI models, it is scarce, expensive to replicate, and subject to deliberate exclusion strategies. Vertical integration of a dominant content platform with AI model development — allowing the same entity that controls the data source to also control the AI trained on that data — must be treated as a structural integration that forecloses independent competition in the AI development market. Structural separation of AI model development from platforms that generate and control training data is required where such integration forecloses independent AI development. Where mandated interoperability or data access at regulated terms would meaningfully reduce competitive barriers without disproportionate cost, such mandates must be imposed as structural remedies. No dominant platform may use its control of user-generated data as a structural moat against competitive AI development.

This policy presumes that dominant digital platform acquisitions of AI companies that represent competitive threats are anti-competitive. Big tech platforms that buy up AI startups before they can challenge existing platform dominance are locking in their power over the markets of the future.

Dominant platform acquisition of AI competitive threats is presumptively prohibited

Acquisition of AI startups by dominant technology platforms is presumptively prohibited where the target has developed or could develop capabilities that would compete with the acquirer's existing AI products or services. This applies the same killer acquisition principle as ANTR-PLTS-0004 to the AI sector specifically: in AI markets, the speed of competitive development makes early acquisition of nascent threats particularly effective as a competitive foreclosure mechanism. Acquisitions structured as talent acqui-hires, early-stage investments that convert to full acquisitions, or exclusive partnerships that prevent the target from working with other parties must all be treated as functional acquisitions subject to the same presumptive prohibition. Research by Cunningham, Ederer, and Ma (2021) established that killer acquisitions — structured to terminate competitive pipeline development — are a systematic and documented pattern in technology and pharmaceutical markets.^[1] In AI, where the competitive stakes involve control of general-purpose cognitive infrastructure, the structural harm from killer acquisition is uniquely severe and long-lasting. The acquirer must demonstrate affirmatively that any acquisition of an AI startup with competitive potential will enhance, not terminate, competitive AI development.

1. Cunningham, C., Ederer, F., & Ma, S. (2021). Killer acquisitions. Journal of Political Economy, 129(3), 649–702. https://doi.org/10.1086/712506 ↩

This policy calls for a standalone Internet Freedom Act permanently codifying bans on internet service providers blocking, slowing, or charging more for certain content; making FCC enforcement mandatory regardless of which administration is in power; and giving any harmed subscriber the right to sue. Net neutrality has been repeatedly overturned and reinstated by different administrations — this policy makes those protections permanent federal law.

Congress must enact a standalone Internet Freedom Act codifying statutory prohibitions on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization; FCC enforcement is mandatory and cannot be suspended by rulemaking or executive order; any harmed subscriber has a private right of action

The FCC has reclassified broadband as a Title II common carrier service and reversed that classification three times in under a decade — an oscillation that demonstrates conclusively that agency rulemaking is not a durable legal foundation for open internet protections.^[1] Title II of the Communications Act was designed for telephone service in 1934; its discretionary provisions and reclassification mechanisms were never designed to govern internet access and have allowed every successive administration to relitigate the same legal question. Congress must enact a freestanding, internet-specific statute — an Internet Freedom Act or equivalent — that places open internet protections beyond administrative recission.

The statute must: (1) codify non-blocking, non-throttling, and non-paid-prioritization as statutory prohibitions — violations of law, not agency rules subject to waiver or reclassification; (2) remove FCC discretion entirely — enforcement of these prohibitions is mandatory and the agency may not grant forbearance, issue waivers, or decline to enforce through rulemaking; (3) establish a private right of action for any broadband subscriber harmed by a violation, with damages, attorney's fees, and injunctive relief available without requiring a prior FCC finding; and (4) be explicitly insulated from modification by FCC rulemaking or executive order — only Congress may amend or repeal these protections. Broadband internet access is essential infrastructure for economic participation, education, healthcare, and democratic engagement; its openness cannot be contingent on which party controls the FCC.^[2]

1. The FCC reclassified broadband under Title II in 2015 (Open Internet Order, 30 FCC Rcd. 5601), reversed that classification in 2017 (Restoring Internet Freedom Order, 33 FCC Rcd. 311), reclassified again in 2024 (Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet, FCC 24-52), and the 2024 order was vacated by the Sixth Circuit in Ohio Telecom Ass'n v. FCC, No. 24-3450 (6th Cir. 2024) — a cycle spanning less than a decade that demonstrates the structural inadequacy of agency rulemaking as the mechanism for protecting net neutrality. ↩
2. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56. The Act's framework of discretionary Title II/Title I classification was designed for a pre-internet telecommunications landscape and does not provide stable statutory authority for internet non-discrimination obligations. ↩

This policy requires broadband competition to be structurally guaranteed by forcing incumbent providers to share their infrastructure with competitors at regulated wholesale prices, open-access mandates for publicly funded networks, and a ban on below-cost pricing designed to drive out rivals. Without rules forcing infrastructure sharing, the company that owns the cable line to your home has a permanent monopoly.

Broadband competition must be structurally guaranteed through functional local loop unbundling at regulated wholesale rates, open-access mandates for publicly funded networks, and prohibition on exclusionary below-cost bundling

An arbitrary minimum number of ISPs does not produce genuine competition if new entrants cannot afford to reach customers. The structural barrier to broadband competition is last-mile infrastructure: the copper, fiber, and coaxial cable connecting the central office to each home. Incumbents built this infrastructure under monopoly franchise conditions with public subsidies and rights-of-way, and have used exclusive control of it to foreclose competitive entry. Congress must require functional local loop unbundling — incumbents must provide competing providers with access to last-mile infrastructure at regulated wholesale rates set to permit a viable competitive return, using the same physical facilities the incumbent uses for its own retail service.^[1] The Telecommunications Act of 1996 established unbundling obligations that the FCC progressively dismantled through reclassification; Congress must restore them by statute and remove FCC discretion to weaken them.

Two additional structural requirements are mandatory: (1) open access for publicly funded broadband — any broadband network that receives federal or state subsidy, grant, or favorable regulatory treatment must be operated as an open access network available to any ISP on non-discriminatory terms and at cost-based wholesale rates; and (2) ban on exclusionary bundling — below-cost bundling of broadband with affiliated content, streaming services, wireless plans, or device offerings, when the pricing is specifically designed to foreclose competitive entry rather than reflect genuine cost efficiencies, is prohibited as an exclusionary practice under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The structural standard for broadband competition is not a headcount of providers — it is whether structural conditions exist that permit any provider with a viable business model to enter and compete in the last-mile market.

1. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, § 251, 110 Stat. 56 (codified at 47 U.S.C. § 251). Section 251(c)(3) required incumbent local exchange carriers to provide unbundled network elements at cost-based rates; the FCC's 2003 Triennial Review Order and subsequent proceedings progressively limited these obligations, and the FCC's 2017 reclassification of broadband eliminated them for cable broadband entirely. ↩

This policy prohibits apartment buildings and landlords from signing exclusive deals with a single broadband provider that block tenants from choosing a competing service. Exclusive building agreements trap residents in a monopoly where they cannot shop for better or cheaper broadband.

Exclusive broadband-property arrangements that foreclose tenant access to competing providers are prohibited

Exclusive arrangements between broadband providers and property owners — including apartment buildings, multi-dwelling units, and commercial properties — that prevent tenants or occupants from accessing competing internet service providers are anticompetitive and prohibited. Exclusive broadband access agreements, whether characterized as bulk billing arrangements, revenue-sharing agreements, or marketing exclusivity contracts, function as private monopoly franchises that extend a single provider's market power to every unit in a building regardless of the broader geographic broadband market. A tenant in a building with an exclusive broadband agreement has no more choice of ISP than if they lived in a geographic monopoly — the exclusivity agreement manufactures captive markets where none would otherwise exist. No property owner may enter into or enforce an exclusive agreement with a single broadband provider that forecloses tenant choice of internet service provider. The FCC must classify exclusive broadband access arrangements as anticompetitive conduct prohibited under the Communications Act. Property owners receiving any federal housing subsidy or financing must affirmatively permit multi-provider broadband access to all units as a condition of federal assistance.

This policy establishes that federal law overrides state laws that block local governments from building their own broadband networks, and guarantees communities the right to build public broadband infrastructure. Several states have passed laws prohibiting cities and towns from offering public internet service — this policy removes those barriers.

State laws preempting municipal broadband networks are preempted by federal law; communities have the right to build public broadband infrastructure

State laws that prohibit or substantially restrict municipalities, counties, and public utilities from constructing, owning, or operating broadband networks are preempted by federal statute. Over 18 states have enacted laws — typically at the behest of incumbent ISP lobbying — that prevent local governments from building public broadband networks to serve communities where private providers have refused to invest or have built inadequate infrastructure.^[1] These preemption laws are not neutral competition policy; they are legislatively manufactured monopoly protection, eliminating the only structural alternative to private ISP dominance available to communities: public ownership. Communities where private broadband providers have underserved or abandoned residents — including rural areas, low-income urban neighborhoods, and tribal lands — must have the right to build and operate public broadband networks as a matter of federal telecommunications policy. Municipal and cooperative broadband networks have demonstrated consistently lower prices, higher speeds, and better customer service than incumbent private ISPs in markets where they operate, including the well-documented examples of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Longmont, Colorado; and Lafayette, Louisiana. Congress must affirmatively preempt state municipal broadband preemption laws and establish a federal right for local governments and cooperatives to build public broadband infrastructure.

1. Institute for Local Self-Reliance. (2024). Community broadband networks: State preemption laws. https://muninetworks.org/content/preemption ↩

This policy establishes that radio spectrum is a public resource and prohibits dominant carriers from accumulating spectrum in ways that block new competitors from entering the market. A carrier that purchases spectrum it does not need, simply to prevent rivals from using it, is hoarding a shared public resource.

Radio spectrum is a public resource; dominant carrier spectrum accumulation that forecloses competitive entry is prohibited

Radio spectrum is a public resource held in trust for the American people. Spectrum licenses are not private property; they are conditional grants of the right to use a public resource for a defined purpose. Dominant wireless carriers' accumulation of spectrum licenses at auction — acquiring spectrum not for deployment but to deny rivals access to the input required to compete — constitutes anticompetitive foreclosure of a public resource and is prohibited. The FCC must enforce use-it-or-lose-it spectrum rules: any licensed spectrum that a carrier cannot demonstrate is deployed at a defined utilization threshold within a prescribed period must be returned to the public pool and re-auctioned. Spectrum auctions must include hard caps on the total share of licensed spectrum any single carrier may hold in any geographic market, calculated across all frequency bands. Dominant carriers may not acquire additional spectrum in markets where their existing holdings already exceed the market concentration threshold. Spectrum policy must be treated as a structural antitrust question, not merely a technical licensing question: spectrum accumulation is the mechanism by which incumbent carriers foreclose competitive entry by smaller carriers and potential new entrants.

This policy prohibits zero-rating arrangements that favor an ISP's own affiliated content and bans the use of data caps as a weapon to disadvantage competing content providers. When an ISP does not count its own streaming service against your data cap but counts a competitor's, it is rigging the market — not competing on quality.

Zero-rating arrangements that favor ISP-affiliated content and data caps used as competitive weapons are prohibited

Zero-rating arrangements — under which an ISP exempts its own affiliated content or the content of a paying partner from a subscriber's data cap while counting competing services against the cap — are discriminatory practices that use data cap architecture as a competitive weapon. The neutrality violation is structural: when a subscriber's Netflix usage counts against their data cap but the same ISP's proprietary streaming service does not, the ISP has manufactured a price advantage for its own content at the subscriber's expense without any network management justification. This is paid prioritization by a different mechanism, and it must be treated as such. Data caps themselves, when deployed by monopoly or duopoly ISPs without competitive pressure requiring efficient network management, function primarily as revenue extraction mechanisms that also happen to disadvantage competing online services. ISPs with dominant positions in a geographic market — defined as markets where no more than two providers offer service at adequate speeds — are prohibited from: (1) applying zero-rating to affiliated or partner content while metering competing content; (2) applying data caps that are not demonstrably tied to actual network congestion management; and (3) offering sponsored-data arrangements that allow third parties to purchase exemption from data caps unavailable to rivals.

This policy requires that competing broadband providers be granted access to utility poles, conduit, and public rights-of-way within 90 days, with disputes resolved by an independent arbitrator rather than the incumbent, and makes willful delays an antitrust violation subject to triple damages. Refusing to let competing providers attach cables to utility poles is one of the most effective ways incumbents block competition — this policy removes that tool.

Competing broadband providers must be granted access to utility poles, conduit, and rights-of-way within 90 days; disputes are resolved by an independent arbitrator, not the incumbent; willful delay is an antitrust violation subject to treble damages

Incumbent ISPs and utilities have systematically used control over access to utility poles, underground conduit, and public rights-of-way as a competitive weapon — not through outright refusal, which Section 224 of the Communications Act nominally prohibits, but through indefinite delays in "make-ready" processes, inflated cost estimates, manufactured procedural disputes, and litigation tactics designed to exhaust competitive entrants' capital before a single wire is strung.^[1] The practical effect is identical to refusal of access: a competitor that cannot attach to poles for two to four years at unpredictable cost cannot build a competitive network, regardless of what the law nominally permits.

Congress must enact hard statutory timelines with mandatory access rights and automatic enforcement. Specifically: (1) any competing broadband provider must be granted physical access to utility poles, conduit, and rights-of-way within 90 days of a completed application — this is a hard deadline, not a target; (2) any dispute over pole access — including make-ready scope, cost allocation, or technical objections — must be resolved by an independent arbitrator selected from a neutral panel maintained by a federal agency; the incumbent may not serve as the decision-maker in any dispute to which it is a party; (3) willful delay of access beyond the 90-day statutory deadline — defined as failure to complete access without a legitimate safety justification verified by an independent inspector — constitutes an antitrust violation subject to treble damages and attorney's fees; and (4) public rights-of-way are public infrastructure; access terms may not be delegated to entities with a financial interest in foreclosing the competition the access would enable.

1. 47 U.S.C. § 224 (Section 224 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended). The FCC's One-Touch Make-Ready rules (2018) and subsequent pole attachment proceedings have been circumvented through litigation and procedural objections by incumbent carriers; voluntary compliance has proven structurally insufficient to eliminate delay tactics. ↩

This policy requires broadband ISPs that also own content distribution networks, streaming libraries, or production studios to divest those content holdings, treating ISP-content vertical integration as a structural conflict of interest that behavioral promises cannot fix. An ISP that also owns a competing streaming service has every incentive to slow down rivals' streams — no amount of monitoring fully prevents that.

Broadband ISPs that also own content distribution networks, content libraries, or content production entities must divest their content holdings; ISP-content vertical integration is a structural conflict of interest that behavioral conditions cannot cure

An ISP that also controls content holds a structural conflict of interest: it has financial incentives to degrade competing content services, throttle rival streaming platforms, and favor its own content on networks where it faces no effective competitive check. The Comcast/NBCUniversal merger (2011) created precisely this structure — combining dominant cable ISP infrastructure with a major content network — and the behavioral conditions imposed as merger approval terms expired without resolving the underlying conflict.^[1] The history of merger conditions in ISP-content combinations has demonstrated uniformly that time-limited behavioral commitments do not permanently align the incumbent's incentives with the open internet principles net neutrality is designed to protect.

Congress must prohibit broadband ISPs from holding ownership interests in content distribution networks, content libraries, or content production entities. Existing incumbent ISP-content combinations must be unwound through divestiture on a defined statutory timeline of no more than three years from enactment. No new ISP-content combinations may be formed. The prohibition applies to all transmission technologies — cable, fiber, DSL, fixed wireless, and satellite broadband — and to all forms of content ownership, including partial equity stakes, revenue-sharing arrangements, and affiliated entity relationships. A private right of action must be available to any broadband subscriber harmed by an ISP's preferential treatment of affiliated content, with damages, attorney's fees, and injunctive relief.

1. In the Matter of Applications of Comcast Corporation, General Electric Company and NBC Universal, Inc., Memorandum Opinion and Order, 26 FCC Rcd. 4238 (2011) (imposing behavioral conditions as a condition of merger approval). The conditions included open internet obligations and program access requirements that expired on expiration dates specified in the order rather than providing permanent structural protections. ↩

This policy establishes that when a franchisor coordinates prices or wages across independently owned franchise locations, that is an automatically illegal horizontal restraint of trade under antitrust law. A franchisor that tells all its franchisees what to charge customers or what to pay workers is price-fixing, even if each location is technically a separate business.

Franchisor coordination of prices or wages across independently owned franchisee businesses is a per se horizontal restraint of trade

Franchise agreements and franchisor policies that set retail prices, wages, or core working conditions across independently owned and operated franchisee businesses are per se horizontal restraints of trade under Sherman Act Section 1. The franchisee's formal legal independence does not convert horizontal coordination among competing businesses — all subject to common franchisor direction on pricing and wages — into a lawful vertical agreement. When a franchisor uses its contractual control to impose uniform wages or uniform prices across franchisees operating in the same geographic market, it is operating a cartel. This is not a difficult legal question requiring rule-of-reason analysis; it is the application of existing per se doctrine to a deliberate structural evasion of per se rules. The legal fiction of "vertical" control — when the functional result is horizontal coordination among competing businesses — must not immunize what is economically a cartel agreement from per se treatment. Congress and the DOJ must close this evasion by statute and by enforcement guidance, and must prosecute franchisors that use the franchise system as a cartel coordination mechanism.

This policy establishes that no-hire and no-poach clauses in franchise contracts — where franchisees agree not to hire each other's workers — are per se (automatically illegal) antitrust violations subject to criminal prosecution. These clauses trap workers in their current jobs by eliminating competition between employers for their labor.

No-hire and no-poach clauses in franchise contracts are per se antitrust violations subject to criminal prosecution

No-hire and no-poach clauses embedded in franchise agreements — prohibiting franchisees from hiring workers employed by other franchisees of the same brand or by the franchisor itself — are per se violations of Sherman Act Section 1, subject to criminal prosecution. These clauses function as wage-fixing and worker-mobility-suppression agreements among competing employers, enforced through the franchise system rather than through direct employer-to-employer negotiation; the mechanism of coordination does not change the competitive harm. The DOJ and FTC's 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals established that naked no-poach and wage-fixing agreements between competing employers are per se violations subject to criminal prosecution.^[1] That guidance applies with full force to franchise-embedded no-hire clauses: a no-poach agreement is no less a per se violation because it is buried in a franchise operations manual rather than agreed to directly between competing employers. This platform requires codification in statute and mandatory criminal prosecution of franchisors that continue to use no-hire clauses. Franchisors that have enforced such clauses must be required to disgorge unlawful profits derived from suppressed labor costs.

1. U.S. Department of Justice & Federal Trade Commission. (2016). Antitrust guidance for human resource professionals. https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download ↩

This policy establishes that misclassifying workers as independent contractors to deny them collective bargaining rights is itself a structural harm to competition, enforceable under antitrust law. Corporations that misclassify workers gain an unfair competitive advantage over employers who follow the law and bear those labor costs honestly.

Worker misclassification to evade collective bargaining rights is a structural competition harm enforceable under antitrust law

Misclassification of employees as independent contractors — when the contracting firm exercises meaningful control over the worker's schedule, pricing, customer assignments, tools, or methods — is a structural competition issue in addition to a labor law violation. Workers denied collective bargaining rights through misclassification face monopsony exploitation without recourse: they cannot counteract buyer power through collective action because they are denied the legal status that makes collective action lawful. Firms that misclassify workers to eliminate collective bargaining rights are using a legal fiction to entrench monopsony power — the buyer-side equivalent of monopoly exploitation. Enforcement must address both the labor law violation and the antitrust harm: monopsony in labor markets suppresses wages, reduces labor market competition, and produces the same structural harm to workers that monopoly produces for consumers. The ABC test — as codified in California AB-5 and the Department of Labor's 2024 independent contractor rule — must be established as the federal standard for determining independent contractor status. Platforms and firms that use misclassification to eliminate legally required labor costs and bargaining rights are not competing on merit; they are competing by externalizing the costs of labor onto misclassified workers while competitors who correctly classify workers bear those costs.

This policy requires that dominant digital platforms controlling access to markets be designated as common carriers — like utilities — with upfront obligations to treat all users fairly, rather than being regulated only after harmful behavior occurs. Platforms that everyone must use to reach customers have utility-like power over the economy and should be regulated accordingly.

Dominant digital platforms controlling market access must be designated as common carriers with ex-ante gatekeeper obligations

Digital platforms that control access to markets, audiences, or data necessary for commercial participation must be designated as common carriers with non-discrimination and access obligations imposed ex-ante — before harm is proven in individual cases, not after years of case-by-case litigation. The EU Digital Markets Act (Regulation 2022/1925) created a gatekeeper designation framework that imposes structural obligations on dominant platforms automatically upon designation, without requiring proof of specific anticompetitive harm in each instance.^[1] This is the correct model and must be the floor, not the ceiling, for U.S. platform regulation. Ex-ante obligations for designated gatekeepers — non-discrimination, access, interoperability, prohibition on self-preferencing — must be legally binding from designation, not triggered only after a contested adjudication of individual harm. A business that cannot exist without access to Google's search index, Amazon's marketplace, or Apple's App Store faces the same essential-facility dependency as a shipper without rail access; the legal obligations imposed on essential infrastructure must apply accordingly. Gatekeeper designation does not preclude reasonable technical and content moderation decisions; it prohibits discriminatory terms, preferential access for affiliates, and exclusion of rivals without legitimate, documented justification that does not rest on protecting the platform operator's own commercial interests.

1. European Parliament and Council. (2022). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925 ↩

This policy absolutely prohibits essential platforms from favoring their own products in any algorithmic system — with no exceptions and no efficiency justifications. Self-preferencing by a platform that functions as an essential utility is an abuse of power that no claimed benefit can excuse.

Essential platforms are absolutely prohibited from self-preferencing their own products in any algorithmic system

Platforms designated as essential infrastructure under this pillar are absolutely prohibited from prioritizing affiliated products, services, content, or advertisers over rivals in any algorithmic ranking, search result, recommendation system, or feed curation mechanism. This is an absolute prohibition, not a standard to be weighed against claimed efficiencies: there is no efficiency justification for self-preferencing by a gatekeeper platform because the harm — distortion of the information environment on which dependent businesses and users rely — is structural and cannot be offset by unilateral efficiency claims by the party causing the distortion. EU Digital Markets Act Article 6(5) imposes this prohibition on designated gatekeepers in the European Union;^[1] the United States must impose the same or stronger obligation. All platform-operated systems that determine what users see, find, or are recommended must operate under documented non-discrimination standards subject to continuous independent audit, with results published in standardized formats. The platform operator may charge reasonable, non-discriminatory fees for access and promotion; it may not use its control of the algorithmic system to advantage its own commercial interests in any market in which it competes with businesses that depend on the platform for distribution. Violation is a per se antitrust violation subject to structural remedy — including divestiture of the competing commercial operations from the platform infrastructure.

1. European Parliament and Council. (2022). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act), Art. 6(5). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925 ↩

This policy requires dominant communications platforms to provide mandatory technical interoperability — the ability for users to communicate with users on other platforms — to prevent lock-in. When leaving a platform means losing the ability to communicate with everyone you know there, users are effectively trapped with no real choice.

Dominant communications platforms must provide mandatory technical interoperability with competing platforms

Dominant messaging, social networking, and digital communications platforms must provide mandatory technical interoperability allowing users of one platform to communicate with, follow, or connect with users of competing platforms without both parties being required to use the same service. Network lock-in — in which a platform's dominance self-reinforces because users cannot leave without losing their social connections and communication history — is a structural barrier to competition maintained by architectural choices, not technical necessity: the technical protocols required for cross-platform messaging are well understood and widely implemented in other contexts. EU Digital Markets Act Article 7 requires designated gatekeepers to provide interoperability for messaging and communications services as a mandatory obligation, not a voluntary technical cooperation.^[1] The United States must enact equivalent mandatory interoperability requirements. Interoperability standards must be technically sufficient to enable genuine cross-platform communication — open, documented, and implemented in forms that provide real competitive alternatives, not nominal compliance that remains architecturally incompatible with competing services. Dominant platforms that implement interoperability in bad faith or impose technical barriers that prevent effective cross-platform communication must face structural remedies, including divestiture of competing services from the platform infrastructure.

1. European Parliament and Council. (2022). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act), Art. 7. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925 ↩

This policy requires restoring hard statutory limits on how many broadcast stations any single company can own, nationally and per market, with Congress — not the FCC — setting those limits so future administrations cannot reverse them by rulemaking. FCC deregulation has allowed massive broadcast chains to buy up hundreds of local stations, systematically hollowing out local journalism.

Hard statutory national and per-market broadcast ownership caps must be restored and strengthened; FCC administrative deregulation cannot displace congressional mandates

The Federal Communications Commission's progressive loosening of broadcast ownership limits — through successive quadrennial reviews and deregulatory proceedings since the 1990s — enabled the assembly of regional television broadcasting empires that have transformed local news from a community resource into a vehicle for centralized political programming. Congress must enact hard statutory limits on broadcast station ownership that the FCC cannot waive, relax, or reinterpret through administrative proceedings. No single entity may own more than eight television stations nationally, or more than one television station in any single Designated Market Area where fewer than eight independently owned full-power television stations operate.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminated all national radio ownership limits, enabling Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) and other consolidators to accumulate portfolios of hundreds of stations while eliminating local programming, local news staff, and local advertising revenue that had previously supported community journalism.^[1] Radio ownership caps must similarly be restored to pre-1996 levels. The public interest obligations that attach to broadcast licenses under Section 309 of the Communications Act — which requires that license grants and renewals serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity — must be operationalized through binding regulations defining minimum staffing, locally produced content hours, and news programming requirements.^[2] A broadcast license is a grant of public airwaves spectrum; the public retains the right to define the terms of that grant, and concentration of those grants in the hands of national conglomerates is a per se failure to serve the public interest. Administrative convenience and claimed efficiency justifications for consolidation do not override the public's interest in local, independent journalism. The FCC's 2021 Third Order on Reconsideration further relaxing newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules was correctly vacated on remand; Congress must now foreclose future deregulatory backsliding by codifying ownership caps in statute rather than leaving them to the discretion of any given Commission majority.

1. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, § 202, 110 Stat. 56 (1996). https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.pdf ↩
2. Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. § 309 (public interest standard for license grants and renewals). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title47-section309 ↩

This policy requires mandatory disclosure rules and prohibits broadcast chains from presenting nationally produced political content as if it were locally originating. When a national chain requires its local stations to air headquarters-produced political commentary without disclosing the source, local audiences are deceived about who is shaping the news they watch.

Mandatory disclosure and anti-synchronization rules must prohibit broadcast chains from presenting nationally produced political commentary as locally originating content

When a nationally owned broadcast chain requires its local affiliates to air centrally produced political commentary — as Sinclair Broadcast Group required its stations to air "must-run" segments produced by Sinclair's corporate headquarters and presented without disclosure as locally produced news content — the practice is a fraud on viewers who reasonably believe they are receiving locally produced journalism.^[1] This platform requires: (1) mandatory on-screen disclosure, displayed prominently at the opening and close of any segment produced by a corporate parent or centrally by any entity other than the local station's own staff, identifying the actual source; (2) anti-synchronization rules prohibiting any broadcast chain from requiring simultaneous, mandatory broadcast of the same political commentary or editorial content across stations in multiple distinct markets; and (3) minimum locally produced content requirements as a condition of license renewal, enforceable by the FCC under its Section 309 public interest authority.

These are structural transparency and production rules, not viewpoint regulations. The First Amendment does not prevent the government from requiring truthful disclosure about the origin of broadcast content, nor from imposing public interest programming obligations on licensees who operate on public spectrum. The Supreme Court upheld broad FCC public interest programming authority in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969), holding that the scarcity of broadcast spectrum justifies obligations that would be impermissible in print media.^[2] Although Red Lion's fairness doctrine rationale has been narrowed, its foundational holding that broadcast licensees accept public interest obligations as a condition of spectrum access remains good law. Disclosure of origin and anti-synchronization rules fall well within this authority. A viewer in a local market who watches a segment produced in Baltimore and broadcast simultaneously in forty markets without attribution has been deceived about the local character of the journalism they are consuming; correcting that deception is a legitimate regulatory objective.

1. Reported in: Ellison, S. (2018, April 2). Sinclair's script for local news anchors criticizing "fake news" stirs alarm. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com ↩
2. Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/395/367/ ↩

This policy establishes that hedge funds and private equity firms acquiring local news organizations to extract their assets — rather than sustain journalism — constitutes market predation requiring structural remedies. Private equity ownership has gutted newsrooms across the country, leaving communities without anyone covering local government, schools, or courts.

Hedge fund and private equity acquisition of local news organizations for asset extraction is market predation requiring structural remedy

The acquisition of local newspapers and broadcast stations by hedge funds and private equity firms for the purpose of asset extraction — eliminating reporting staff, selling real estate, loading the acquired entity with acquisition debt, extracting management fees, and ultimately shuttering the publication — is a documented pattern of market predation that destroys local news infrastructure without providing any competitive journalistic service. Alden Global Capital, which by 2021 had become the second-largest newspaper owner in the United States with holdings including the Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Herald, exemplifies this model: systematic staff reductions of 50–70%, sale of newsroom real estate, reduction of print frequency, and extraction of value through management fees charged to the acquired newspapers themselves.^[1]

Local journalism serves a democratic function that cannot be reduced to a financial return metric. Research by Northwestern University's Medill School has documented the loss of approximately 2,900 local newspapers since 2005, with private equity and hedge fund acquisition strongly correlated with subsequent closure and staff reduction.^[2] More than 200 counties now have no newspaper of any kind. This is not market failure in the conventional sense — it is a deliberate extraction strategy that produces local news deserts as a predictable byproduct. Structural remedies must include: (1) a right of first refusal for employees, nonprofit organizations, and local community owners on any sale of a local news organization, exercisable within 90 days at fair market value; (2) PE and hedge fund ownership of local news organizations subject to the same leveraged buyout debt restrictions applied to healthcare entities under state PE healthcare transparency laws; and (3) FCC license transfer conditions that require financial acquirers to demonstrate a specific plan for sustaining local news operations as a condition of broadcast license transfer approval.

1. Abernathy, P. M. (2020). News deserts and ghost newspapers: Will local news survive? Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, University of North Carolina. https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/news-deserts-and-ghost-newspapers-will-local-news-survive/ ↩
2. Abernathy, P. M. (2020). News deserts and ghost newspapers: Will local news survive? Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, University of North Carolina. https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/news-deserts-and-ghost-newspapers-will-local-news-survive/ ↩

This policy requires full structural divestiture of Live Nation/Ticketmaster's vertically integrated control spanning venue ownership, the ticketing monopoly, and artist management. Live Nation controls the venues, the ticketing system, and in many cases the artists themselves — giving it the power to squeeze fans, artists, and independent promoters simultaneously.

Live Nation/Ticketmaster's vertical integration across venue ownership, ticketing monopoly, and artist management must be fully structurally separated by divestiture

The 2010 merger of Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster created a vertically integrated entertainment conglomerate controlling ticketing services, concert venue ownership, artist management, and concert promotion simultaneously — a structural arrangement that allows the combined entity to exercise market power at every layer of the live entertainment industry. Ticketmaster processed approximately 70% of major live event tickets sold in the United States as of the DOJ's filing.^[1] An artist who needs to book venues (which Live Nation owns), reach fans through ticketing (which Ticketmaster controls), and engage a promoter (which Live Nation's concert division dominates) confronts a single conglomerate that controls their market access at every stage. Venues that refuse to use Ticketmaster risk retaliation in the form of reduced Live Nation bookings; competing ticketing services cannot gain scale because the venues are locked into Ticketmaster exclusivity through coercive contract terms.

The Department of Justice, joined by 30 state attorneys general, filed suit in May 2024 seeking the breakup of Live Nation Entertainment, including structural divestiture of Ticketmaster from Live Nation's venue and promotion operations.^[2] This platform fully supports structural divestiture as the required remedy. Behavioral remedies — consent decrees prohibiting specific retaliatory conduct — have been tried and have failed; Live Nation violated the 2010 consent decree that was a condition of the original merger and received only a modest extension of its terms as a consequence. The correct remedy is the separation the DOJ seeks: ticketing services must be structurally separated from venue ownership, artist management, and concert promotion, creating the independent competitive markets that the 2010 merger eliminated. Live event attendance is a significant leisure expenditure for ordinary Americans; the extraction of fees, service charges, and dynamic pricing markups by a monopolist with captive consumers is a direct tax on cultural participation.

1. United States et al. v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and Ticketmaster L.L.C. (D.D.C., filed May 23, 2024). https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-v-live-nation-entertainment-inc-and-ticketmaster-llc ↩
2. United States et al. v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and Ticketmaster L.L.C. (D.D.C., filed May 23, 2024). https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-v-live-nation-entertainment-inc-and-ticketmaster-llc ↩

This policy requires structural remedies to address the three major record labels' simultaneous power as dominant buyers of artists' music and as dominant sellers to streaming platforms. When three companies control most of recorded music distribution, they can suppress artists' pay and dictate terms to streaming services at the same time.

Three-label dominance of recorded music gives the major labels simultaneous monopsony power over artists and oligopoly power over streaming platforms; structural remedies are required

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group collectively control approximately two-thirds of recorded music globally — a level of concentration that gives these firms monopsony power over artists who must negotiate recording contracts, and oligopoly power over digital streaming platforms whose licensing negotiations are constrained by the labels' ability to withhold their catalogs collectively.^[1] An artist who cannot access distribution through one of the three major labels faces structural barriers to reaching audiences through streaming platforms that are engineered to depend on major-label catalog. A streaming platform that attempts to negotiate aggressively on royalty rates faces the threat of catalog withdrawal that would make its service commercially unviable. Neither artists nor platforms have meaningful alternatives, because the concentration of ownership has eliminated the independent labels and publishing infrastructure that once provided competitive alternatives.

The Spotify-UMG licensing dispute illustrates this power imbalance concretely: when UMG withdrew its catalog from TikTok in early 2024 over royalty terms, the removal of a single label's content created significant pressure on TikTok's music functionality — demonstrating the leverage available to a single label in a concentrated market.^[2] Structural remedies must address both dimensions of the labels' power: the monopsony over artist contracts must be addressed through mandatory standard-term artist contracts with minimum royalty floors, transparent accounting, and reversion rights; the oligopoly over streaming licensing must be addressed by breaking up the major labels into independently competing entities, separating publishing from recorded music rights, and prohibiting licensing arrangements that function as collective negotiating structures across nominally competing rights holders. Music is a cultural commons whose commercial terms should be determined by fair competition, not by a cartel of three multinational rights-holding conglomerates.

1. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. (2024). Global music report 2024. https://www.ifpi.org/our-industry/industry-data/ ↩
2. Sisario, B. (2024, January 31). Universal Music Group pulls its songs from TikTok. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/arts/music/universal-music-tiktok.html ↩

This policy establishes that streaming platforms that own the studio producing content, the platform distributing it, and the devices on which it is consumed are vertically integrated across the full media stack and subject to the prohibition on favoring their own content. A company that makes the show, runs the streaming service, and sells the television can always ensure its own content is easier to find than a competitor's.

Streaming platforms that own the studio producing content, the platform distributing it, and the devices on which it is consumed are vertically integrated across the full media stack and subject to the self-preferencing prohibition

Vertical integration in media has reached the point where the same conglomerate may simultaneously own the studio producing original content, the streaming service distributing that content, the hardware devices on which consumers watch it, and in some cases the cloud infrastructure on which it is hosted. Apple operates Apple TV+ (streaming service), Apple Studios (content production), and Apple devices (distribution endpoint). Amazon operates Amazon Prime Video (streaming service), Amazon MGM Studios (content production), Amazon Fire TV devices (distribution endpoint), and Amazon Web Services (hosting infrastructure). The Walt Disney Company operates Disney+ and Hulu (streaming services), Disney Studios, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm (content production), ESPN (sports rights), and a network of theme parks that function as integrated brand experiences.^[1]

The self-preferencing prohibition established in this pillar for dominant platforms applies directly to this structure: a streaming service may not favor its own studio's content in algorithmic recommendation systems, search results, or default display over equally or better-reviewed third-party content. A device manufacturer may not pre-install or preference its own streaming service over competing services on devices it sells. A cloud infrastructure provider may not offer favorable hosting terms to its own streaming service that are not available on equal terms to competing streaming services that depend on the same infrastructure. These prohibitions are not novel regulatory burdens; they are the application of the self-dealing prohibition that has always applied to vertically integrated essential infrastructure. A studio that distributes third-party content on a platform it controls must demonstrate through documented, auditable algorithmic standards that third-party content competes on equal terms with affiliated content. Violation is a per se antitrust violation subject to structural remedy, including divestiture of content production from distribution infrastructure.

1. European Parliament and Council. (2022). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act), Art. 6(5) (prohibition on self-preferencing by designated gatekeepers). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925 ↩

This policy establishes that competing companies using a shared pricing algorithm that incorporates rivals' data to set prices are engaged in per se (automatically illegal) cartel coordination under antitrust law — even without any direct communication between the companies. Using the same pricing algorithm that feeds on competitors' data achieves the same result as a back-room price-fixing deal.

Competing firms using a shared pricing algorithm that incorporates rivals' data to set prices are engaged in per se cartel coordination under Sherman Act Section 1, regardless of the absence of direct communication

The classical Sherman Act Section 1 cartel requires proof of a meeting of the minds among competitors — a conspiracy, explicit or implicit, to fix prices or restrict competition. Software-mediated price coordination achieves the same result without the smoke-filled room: when competing firms each subscribe to the same pricing platform that collects each firm's pricing and occupancy data, processes that data through a common algorithm, and recommends prices to all subscribing firms simultaneously, the firms are in a functional cartel in which the algorithm plays the role of the cartel coordinator. The subscribing firms do not need to communicate directly; the platform does the coordination for them. RealPage's YieldStar rental pricing software operated precisely this way: subscribing landlords across nominally competing residential properties submitted occupancy and pricing data to RealPage's system, received algorithmically generated pricing recommendations informed by that pooled competitor data, and implemented those recommendations at rates exceeding 90% — producing coordinated rent increases across competing properties in local rental markets that academic research found to be statistically significant and causally attributable to the software's coordination function.^[1]

The Department of Justice filed suit against RealPage in August 2024 under Sherman Act Section 1, characterizing the arrangement as unlawful coordination among competing landlords.^[2] This platform endorses the DOJ's analysis and goes further: software-mediated price coordination among competing firms using shared data is per se illegal, subject to the same criminal penalties as explicit price-fixing conspiracies. The software provider is a co-conspirator, not a mere vendor. The business model of selling pricing coordination services to competing firms in the same market is itself an antitrust violation. This principle applies beyond residential rental pricing to any market where a shared platform collects competitors' data and recommends pricing informed by that data — including hotel room pricing, airline fare management, and agricultural commodity contracting platforms. The per se rule applies regardless of whether the platform's recommendations are framed as advisory rather than mandatory: effective compliance rates above 50% demonstrate that the advisory framing is a legal fiction.

1. Vogell, H. (2022, October 15). Rent going up? One company's algorithm could be why. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent ↩
2. United States v. RealPage, Inc., No. 1:24-cv-00710 (M.D.N.C., filed August 23, 2024). https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-v-realpage-inc ↩

This policy establishes that mandatory app store exclusivity, forcing developers to use a dominant platform's payment processing, and related lock-in practices by dominant mobile platform operators constitute unlawful tying arrangements requiring structural remedies. Requiring every app sold on a dominant platform to use that platform's payment system creates a payment monopoly over every transaction on those devices.

Mandatory app store exclusivity, commission tying, and payment processing lock-in by dominant mobile platform operators are unlawful tying arrangements requiring structural remedy

Apple's requirement that iOS application developers distribute exclusively through the Apple App Store, pay Apple's 30% commission on digital transactions, and use Apple's payment processing infrastructure — with no technical pathway to distribute iOS software outside Apple's controlled channel — is a tying arrangement that forecloses competing app distribution and payment processing from the most commercially significant mobile platform in the United States. Google's equivalent dominance over Android app distribution through the Google Play Store, reinforced through agreements with device manufacturers and carriers, operates through parallel mechanisms. These arrangements extract significant rents from every software developer who must reach iOS or Android users — which is effectively every commercial software developer — without providing competitive value proportionate to the fee charged. The 30% commission rate predates smartphone app stores and was set unilaterally by platform operators facing no competitive pressure from alternative distribution channels, because those channels do not exist.

The Ninth Circuit's decision in Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc. (2023) held that Apple's anti-steering provisions violated California's unfair competition law and issued a limited injunction, but left the core tying arrangement substantially intact, declining to find that the App Store constituted a separate relevant antitrust market.^[1] This platform rejects that market definition analysis as inconsistent with functional economic reality: iOS users cannot install applications outside the App Store; iOS developers cannot reach iOS users except through the App Store; the practical consequence is that Apple holds a monopoly over the iOS app distribution market that iOS users must use. The correct structural remedy is mandatory sideloading — requiring Apple and Google to permit installation of applications from sources other than their proprietary stores, on terms that are technically sufficient to enable real competitive alternatives — combined with a prohibition on payment processing tying. The EU Digital Markets Act Article 6(4) requires exactly this for designated gatekeepers and provides the model for U.S. legislation.^[2]

1. Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 67 F.4th 946 (9th Cir. 2023). https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/21-16695.pdf ↩
2. European Parliament and Council. (2022). Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 (Digital Markets Act), Art. 6(4) (mandatory sideloading obligations for gatekeeper platforms). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925 ↩

This policy establishes that deliberate artificial scarcity created by dominant platforms — restricting supply not because of real-world limits but to maintain pricing power — is an anti-competitive exclusionary practice with no legitimate business justification. When a platform artificially limits how much competitors can offer in order to keep prices high, it is manufacturing a problem it then profits from.

Deliberate artificial scarcity in digital markets by dominant platforms is a manufactured anticompetitive exclusionary practice without legitimate justification

Physical scarcity is an economic fact: a manufacturer can produce only so many units, and scarcity in physical markets reflects real resource constraints. Digital scarcity is manufactured: a digital file can be reproduced at effectively zero marginal cost, and any scarcity in a digital market is the result of deliberate technical or contractual restrictions imposed by the rights holder or platform operator. Dominant platforms and manufacturers have exploited this asymmetry to create artificial scarcity as an anticompetitive mechanism in several distinct patterns, each of which must be treated as an exclusionary practice subject to antitrust remedy. First, serialized component authentication — in which a device manufacturer encodes software verification requirements into components so that only manufacturer-authorized parts are recognized as legitimate — creates artificial scarcity in the repair parts market by technically foreclosing independently sourced components. Second, regional digital locks on products that are technically distributable globally at zero marginal cost — software, games, streaming content — enforce price discrimination by preventing consumers from accessing lower-price markets, at no incremental technical cost to the rights holder. Third, deliberate software-enforced "limited edition" releases of digital goods that could be distributed without limit exploit manufactured scarcity to extract prices that bear no relationship to production cost.

The antitrust analysis of artificial digital scarcity must assess: (1) whether the dominant firm has a plausible legitimate justification for the scarcity restriction that cannot be achieved through less restrictive means; (2) whether the restriction forecloses competing products, services, or providers from the relevant market; and (3) whether the restriction produces consumer harm disproportionate to any legitimate benefit. Deliberate technical scarcity by dominant platforms — enforced through software mechanisms with no analog in the physical world — is an anticompetitive exclusionary practice because it creates and sustains market power artificially, forecloses the competitive entry that digital markets would otherwise support, and extracts rents from consumers and dependent businesses that would not be available in a competitive market. No claimed intellectual property interest justifies a dominant platform's use of technical scarcity mechanisms to foreclose competition across entire market layers.

This policy establishes that dynamic surge pricing by dominant companies with captive consumers — especially for essential or time-sensitive services — is not legitimate market signaling but monopoly rent extraction, and must be subject to price constraints. When people have no real alternative and prices automatically spike at their moment of greatest need, that is not a free market — it is exploitation.

Dynamic real-time surge pricing by dominant firms with captive consumers for essential or time-sensitive services is monopoly rent extraction, not legitimate market signaling, and must be subject to price constraint

Economists distinguish between dynamic pricing as a competitive market mechanism — in which price signals allocate scarce resources across competing providers — and dynamic pricing as rent extraction by a monopolist from captive consumers. The former improves market efficiency; the latter is a tax on consumers who have no alternatives. The distinction is structural: dynamic pricing by Uber or Lyft in a city with vigorous rideshare and taxi competition functions differently than dynamic pricing by Ticketmaster for a specific concert on the single date it occurs in the single venue it occupies in the single market where the consumer lives. In the latter case, no amount of willingness to pay a higher price reveals any competitive signal, because there is no competitive alternative to which the consumer could turn. The consumer who wants to attend that concert on that night in that city has no substitute. Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing system extracts the maximum willingness to pay from captive consumers as a matter of algorithmic design, not as a market signal that serves any allocative function beyond transferring wealth from fans to the monopolist.

This platform requires price constraints on dominant firms exercising market power over captive consumers for time-sensitive or essential services. The specific mechanism may vary: pre-announced pricing rules that prohibit real-time algorithmic adjustment after tickets go on sale; surcharge caps expressed as a percentage of the face value; or maximum price ratios for services in markets where a single firm controls more than a defined dominant share. Emergency price gouging is already prohibited in many states during declared disasters;^[1] the economic logic of that prohibition — that a dominant supplier may not exploit consumer captivity during periods of acute need to extract prices unavailable in competitive markets — applies equally to the structural captivity created by monopoly control of event ticketing, transit, and time-sensitive service markets. The consumer welfare standard's tolerance of this conduct on the grounds that high prices "clear the market" is precisely the analytical framework this platform rejects: consumer welfare measured by monopoly-constrained outcomes is not consumer welfare at all.

1. National Conference of State Legislatures. (2023). Price gouging state statutes. https://www.ncsl.org/financial-services/price-gouging-state-statutes ↩

This policy requires a statutory cap on meatpacking four-firm market concentration and mandates divestiture wherever any four firms collectively control more than 50% of any agricultural processing sector. Four companies currently control roughly 80% of U.S. beef processing — that level of concentration gives them enormous power over what farmers are paid and what consumers pay at the grocery store.

Meatpacking four-firm concentration ratio must be subject to a statutory cap; mandatory divestiture is required where concentration exceeds 50% for any four firms in any agricultural processing sector

Four companies — JBS USA, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef Packing — process approximately 85% of U.S. federally inspected beef, a level of concentration that gives these firms simultaneous monopsony power over cattle producers who must sell to one of four buyers and oligopoly power over grocery retailers who must source beef from one of four major suppliers.^[1] Cattle producers in regions where only two or three of the four major packers operate face an even more acute monopsony: a producer who cannot economically transport cattle to distant packers must sell to whichever of the regional buyers is available, and that buyer faces no competitive pressure to offer a fair price. USDA data shows a long-term decline in the farm share of retail beef prices, from approximately 50% in the 1970s to below 15% in recent years — a measure of value transfer from cattle producers to the consolidating processing intermediaries who have captured the price spread between farm gate and grocery shelf.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the structural fragility created by this concentration: when a single Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa closed temporarily in April 2020, it disrupted national beef supply chains because the concentration of processing capacity meant that individual plants handled volumes that could not be quickly rerouted to alternatives.^[2] The Biden administration's Meat and Poultry Supply Chain Initiative (2022) correctly identified concentration as the structural cause of both producer payment inequity and supply chain fragility, and proposed $1 billion in competitive grants to build independent processing capacity. That initiative was a start; this platform requires the structural remedy: a statutory cap on four-firm concentration ratios in any agricultural processing sector, with mandatory divestiture required where the four-firm ratio exceeds 50%. Processing capacity divested under this requirement must be sold to genuinely independent entrants, not to existing oligopoly participants.

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (2022). Meat price spreads. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/meat-price-spreads/ ↩
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2022, January). USDA strengthens meat and poultry supply chains: Biden-Harris administration invests in building fair, competitive, and resilient meat and poultry supply chains. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2022/01/03/usda-strengthens-meat-and-poultry-supply-chains ↩

This policy requires structural separation of seed and agrochemical businesses, recognizing that the 2015-to-2018 wave of mega-mergers eliminated competitive input markets for farmers. Those mergers reduced the number of major global seed and pesticide companies from six to three.

The consolidated global seed and agrochemical oligopoly resulting from the 2015–2018 mega-merger wave has eliminated competitive input markets for farmers; structural separation of seed and agrochemical businesses is required

The 2018 completion of Bayer's $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto — following Dow Chemical's merger with DuPont (2017) and ChemChina's acquisition of Syngenta (2017) — compressed the global seed and agrochemical market from six major competitors to four dominant conglomerates controlling approximately 60% of global commercial seed sales and 70% of global pesticide sales.^[1] Farmers who cannot access competitive seed and chemical inputs are captive to a global oligopoly with no meaningful alternatives for critical crop inputs. The conditions imposed on the Bayer-Monsanto merger by the DOJ — requiring divestiture of Bayer's seed and herbicide businesses in the United States — were inadequate: the divested assets went to BASF, which is itself a dominant agrochemical firm, not a genuinely new competitive entrant. Moving assets among existing oligopoly participants does not restore competition; it rearranges the oligopoly's seating chart.

Research by Philip Howard at Michigan State University, tracking seed industry consolidation over decades through visual consolidation maps, demonstrates that the major seed companies have systematically acquired independent regional seed companies, eliminating the diversity of germplasm ownership and the competitive pressure that independent breeders provided to major firms.^[2] The combination of seed patents, agrochemical patents, and data platform ownership in the hands of a few conglomerates creates a vertically integrated input supply chain that farmers cannot escape: the seed they plant requires the companion herbicide the same company sells, and the precision agriculture data platform the company operates collects and uses data from the farmer's fields. This vertical integration reinforces the input oligopoly with a data moat. Structural remedies must include mandatory separation of seed businesses from agrochemical businesses within merged conglomerates, prohibition on patent portfolios that tie seed use to specific companion chemicals, and mandatory licensing of seed germplasm to independent breeders and public university research programs.

1. ETC Group. (2019). Plate tectonics: The ETC Group's food and farm 2019 report. https://www.etcgroup.org/content/plate-tectonics ↩
2. Howard, P. H. (2023). Seed industry structure [consolidation diagram series]. Michigan State University. https://philhoward.net/2018/12/31/global-seed-industry-changes-since-2013/ ↩

This policy establishes that tournament-based contract farming systems — where poultry and pork processors rank farmers against each other to determine pay, giving the processor total power over income — are prohibited under the Packers and Stockyards Act, with criminal enforcement and a private right of action for farmers. Under tournament systems, farmers invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in facilities but receive pay determined by a company that also controls the neighbors they are being ranked against.

Tournament-based contract farming systems used by poultry and pork integrators are monopsony exploitation mechanisms prohibited under the Packers and Stockyards Act; criminal enforcement and private right of action are required

Integrators in the poultry and pork industries — Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Smithfield Foods, and their major competitors — use tournament contract systems in which growers (farmers who raise the animals) are paid not on an objective cost-plus basis but relative to the performance of other growers in the same integrator's system in the same settlement group. A grower whose flock performs in the bottom third of the tournament receives a lower price per pound regardless of the grower's absolute performance or the costs they incurred. The integrator supplies the chicks, the feed, the veterinary inputs, and the contract terms; the grower supplies the land, the buildings (built to integrator specification at significant capital cost), and the labor. The grower has no ability to negotiate the contract terms, no ability to sell to competing integrators once they have built facilities to a single integrator's specification, and no ability to use superior performance to build a competitive advantage because the tournament structure converts their superior performance into a subsidy for the grower at the bottom.

The Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, 7 U.S.C. § 181 et seq., was enacted expressly to prohibit unfair, unjustly discriminatory, and deceptive practices by meat packers and livestock dealers.^[1] USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) has historically failed to enforce the Act against tournament contracting, in part because courts have required proof of competitive harm beyond the harm to the individual grower — a standard designed for product market monopoly that is analytically inapplicable to monopsony exploitation of captive contract farmers. The Act must be amended to: (1) explicitly prohibit tournament payment systems as a form of unjustly discriminatory payment; (2) require cost-of-production transparency from integrators so that growers can assess the reasonableness of their compensation; (3) provide criminal penalties for integrators who retaliate against growers who exercise legal rights under the Act; and (4) create a private right of action for affected growers with treble damages and attorneys' fees. Without a private enforcement mechanism, the growers most harmed by these systems — who are individually captive to a single integrator with whom they have a long-term debt relationship — cannot realistically seek relief.

1. Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, 7 U.S.C. §§ 181–229c. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title7/chapter9&edition=prelim ↩

This policy requires that grocery retail mergers be evaluated based on their impact on local markets specifically, and prohibits any merger that would leave fewer than three viable competitors in any local grocery market. A merger that looks small nationally can eliminate meaningful competition in a specific community, leaving residents with fewer choices and higher prices.

Grocery retail mergers must be evaluated on local market impact; no merger leaving fewer than three viable competitors in any local grocery market may be approved

The Federal Trade Commission's successful challenge to the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger in late 2024 established a critical analytical principle: grocery market concentration must be assessed at the local market level, not at the national level, because consumers shop for groceries in their local geographic area and cannot substitute a Kroger in another city for a Kroger that has eliminated local competition.^[1] The proposed merger would have combined the two largest supermarket chains in the United States, reducing competitive options to fewer than three viable grocery alternatives in hundreds of local markets across the country. The FTC correctly identified that the proposed divestiture package — in which Kroger proposed to sell hundreds of stores to a regional chain — was inadequate because the divested stores would not constitute a viable competitive alternative to a merged Kroger-Albertsons. Congress must codify this analytical standard in statute: any grocery merger that would leave fewer than three independently owned, viable full-service grocery competitors in any local market is presumptively anticompetitive and may not be approved without a compelling demonstration that the merger will create pro-competitive benefits in that specific local market.

Grocery access is a matter of public health and economic survival, not merely consumer preference. Food retail deserts — areas where residents lack reasonable access to full-service grocery stores — are associated with significantly worse health outcomes, higher rates of diet-related chronic disease, and economic burdens on low-income households who must travel further or pay higher prices at convenience stores and fast food outlets.^[2] Grocery mergers that consolidate market power in communities already underserved by retail food infrastructure are doubly harmful: they reduce competitive pressure on prices and selection while making it harder for new entrants to establish viable alternative grocery operations. The local market threshold of three viable competitors reflects a reasonable minimum for competitive pricing; markets with two or fewer grocery alternatives are functionally duopolistic or monopolistic regardless of the national market share of the surviving operators.

1. FTC v. Kroger Co., No. 3:24-cv-00347 (D. Or. 2024) (preliminary injunction granted blocking proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger). https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/2310077-ftc-v-kroger-co ↩
2. Ver Ploeg, M., & Rahkovsky, I. (2016). Recent evidence on the effects of food store access on food choice and diet quality. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44143/57796_eib-145.pdf ↩

This policy establishes farmers' absolute right to own, control, and take with them all data generated by their own farm operations, and prohibits precision agriculture platforms from using that farmer-generated data to inform pricing or contract terms that extract value back from the farmers who created it. Data generated by a farmer's own equipment belongs to that farmer — not to the technology company that sold the tractor.

Farmers have an absolute right of ownership, portability, and control over their own farm operational data; precision agriculture platforms may not use farmer-generated data to inform pricing or contracting terms that extract value from the farmers who generated the data

Precision agriculture platforms — John Deere's Operations Center, Climate Corporation's Climate FieldView, and comparable services — collect farm-level operational data including yield maps, soil health measurements, planting decisions, application records, and equipment performance metrics from farmers using connected equipment and digital tools. This data is enormously valuable: it enables input optimization, yield prediction, and agronomic decision-making that can meaningfully affect farm profitability. It is also a strategic asset for the platform operator, who can use aggregated farm data to understand regional growing conditions, optimize input recommendations (including the platform operator's own input products or affiliated products), and price inputs and equipment in ways that capture value from the very farmers whose operations generated the data.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has advocated for farm data portability and transparency principles recognizing that farm operational data is the property of the farmer, not the platform that collects it.^[1] This platform codifies those principles with the force of law: (1) farmers have full ownership rights over all operational data generated by their farming operations, regardless of the equipment or platform used to collect it; (2) farmers have the right to export their data in machine-readable, interoperable format to any competing platform or advisory service at any time; (3) precision agriculture platform operators are prohibited from using individual or aggregated farmer data to inform the pricing, licensing terms, or availability of seeds, chemicals, equipment, or financing offered to those farmers or to their region's farmers as a class; and (4) platform operators may not condition equipment functionality, warranty coverage, or service access on consent to data sharing for commercial purposes beyond operational support. John Deere's right-to-repair controversies — in which the company's software locks prevent farmers from accessing diagnostic tools for their own equipment, creating dependency on dealer networks for repairs — represent the same fundamental structure of manufactured dependency that farm data monetization creates: the farmer buys a tool, but the manufacturer retains control of the data the tool generates and the software required to maintain it.

1. American Farm Bureau Federation. (2016). Privacy and security principles for farm data. https://www.fb.org/issues/technology/data-privacy/privacy-and-security-principles-for-farm-data ↩

This policy establishes that software authentication locks, serialized parts matching, and cryptographic repair locks used by dominant manufacturers to prevent independent repair are per se (automatically illegal) tying arrangements subject to antitrust remedy. When a manufacturer programs equipment to reject parts not purchased from an authorized dealer, it is forcing consumers into a monopoly on repairs with no competitive alternative.

Software authentication locks, serialized parts pairing, and cryptographic repair foreclosure by dominant manufacturers are per se tying arrangements subject to antitrust remedy

When a dominant device manufacturer uses software authentication systems to require that replacement components be authorized and paired to a specific device through the manufacturer's proprietary verification system — and when the practical effect of this requirement is that only the manufacturer or its authorized service network can perform repairs using functioning components — the manufacturer has tied the sale of the device to the use of the manufacturer's repair and parts services. This is a tying arrangement under Sherman Act Section 1 and Section 2. The FTC's July 2021 report to Congress on repair restrictions, Nixing the Fix, documented the widespread use of such restrictions across consumer electronics, agricultural equipment, and medical devices, and found no adequate safety, security, or quality justification for the most restrictive lock-out mechanisms.^[1]

Apple's parts pairing system — under which iPhone components including screens, batteries, cameras, and Face ID sensors are serialized to specific devices and may not be replaced by functionally identical components without triggering software-enforced degradation warnings or feature disablement — is the paradigmatic consumer electronics case. John Deere's software locks preventing independent repair technicians from accessing diagnostic and calibration functions on modern agricultural equipment represent the agricultural equipment case: a farmer whose tractor fails during harvest cannot wait for an authorized dealer technician to travel to the field; they require the ability to diagnose and repair their own equipment immediately. Medical device manufacturers whose proprietary diagnostic software prevents independent biomedical equipment technicians from servicing imaging equipment and patient monitoring devices impose significant costs on hospitals while creating patient safety risks when equipment cannot be maintained promptly. None of these restrictions is required for safety or quality; each of them is required for the manufacturer's ability to capture the post-sale repair and parts revenue stream from consumers who have no alternative. They are classic aftermarket tying arrangements subject to antitrust challenge under the framework established in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services.^[2]

1. Federal Trade Commission. (2021, May). Nixing the fix: An FTC report to Congress on repair restrictions. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/nixing-fix-ftc-report-congress-repair-restrictions/nixing_the_fix_report_final_5521_630pm-508_002.pdf ↩
2. Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., 504 U.S. 451 (1992) (aftermarket tying by dominant manufacturer subject to antitrust scrutiny). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/504/451/ ↩

This policy calls for Congress to pass a comprehensive federal right-to-repair statute giving consumers and independent technicians enforceable access rights for consumer electronics, farm equipment, medical devices, and motor vehicles. A federal statute would establish a uniform national floor protecting all Americans equally, replacing the current patchwork of inconsistent state laws.

Congress must enact a comprehensive federal right-to-repair statute establishing enforceable access rights for consumers and independent technicians across consumer electronics, agricultural equipment, medical devices, and motor vehicles

The FTC's May 2021 report to Congress on repair restrictions found that repair restrictions raise costs for consumers and businesses, harm independent repair shops and technicians, generate unnecessary electronic waste, and disproportionately burden low-income consumers who depend on repair rather than replacement to extend product life.^[1] The FTC further found no adequate safety or security justification for the most anticompetitive restrictions. Despite these findings, Congress has not acted. The EU adopted a comprehensive Right to Repair Directive in 2024, requiring manufacturers to make spare parts, repair manuals, and diagnostic tools available to consumers and independent technicians, and prohibiting software-based repair foreclosure.^[2] The United States must enact equivalent legislation or risk permanent structural disadvantage for American independent repair businesses and permanently higher consumer costs relative to European competitors.

The federal right-to-repair statute must establish: (1) a legally enforceable right for consumers and qualified independent repair technicians to obtain diagnostic software access, repair manuals, and replacement parts for any product they own, on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms; (2) a prohibition on manufacturers using software authentication, parts pairing, or warranty void conditions to foreclose independent repair or the use of third-party components; (3) a definition of "qualified independent repair technician" based on objective competency standards administered by independent bodies, not manufacturer-controlled certification schemes that replicate the access barriers they nominally address; (4) applicability across consumer electronics, agricultural equipment, medical devices, and motor vehicles; and (5) enforcement by the FTC, with civil penalties per violation, and a private right of action for consumers and independent repair businesses with attorneys' fee provisions sufficient to make individual claims economically viable. State right-to-repair laws providing stronger protections are explicitly preserved; the federal statute establishes a floor, not a ceiling.

1. Federal Trade Commission. (2021, May). Nixing the fix: An FTC report to Congress on repair restrictions. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/nixing-fix-ftc-report-congress-repair-restrictions/nixing_the_fix_report_final_5521_630pm-508_002.pdf ↩
2. European Parliament and Council. (2024). Directive (EU) 2024/1799 on common rules promoting the repair of goods. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024L1799 ↩

This policy establishes that when a dominant consumer electronics manufacturer deliberately degrades device performance through software updates, or withdraws support from technically capable devices to pressure consumers into upgrades, that constitutes anti-competitive exclusionary conduct. Intentionally slowing your phone through a software update is not a technical limitation — it is a business strategy that harms consumers and generates unnecessary electronic waste.

A dominant consumer electronics manufacturer that degrades device performance through software updates or withdraws support from technically capable devices to accelerate replacement purchasing is engaged in anticompetitive exclusionary conduct

Apple's 2017 practice of throttling the CPU performance of older iPhones through software updates — without disclosing to consumers that the throttling was occurring or that it was designed to limit peak performance rather than to protect battery health — was challenged in consumer protection litigation across multiple jurisdictions and resulted in settlements totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.^[1] Apple's explanation that the throttling was intended to prevent unexpected shutdowns by limiting CPU peak loads on degraded batteries was accepted in part by some courts, but the absence of disclosure — the fact that users were not informed that their device performance was being constrained by a software update and were not offered the option to opt out — constituted actionable consumer deception regardless of the stated technical justification.

Where such conduct is performed by a dominant firm with substantial and durable market power in the relevant device market, the analysis does not end with consumer protection. Deliberate performance throttling of existing devices to accelerate replacement purchasing is, from the perspective of antitrust law, an exclusionary practice that forecloses the competitive alternative of continuing to use a functioning device — the most direct substitute for purchasing a new one. A firm without market power could not sustain this strategy because consumers would switch to competitors; a dominant firm can sustain it precisely because switching costs, ecosystem lock-in, and network effects prevent meaningful consumer response. The anticompetitive harm is the foreclosure of the "extend the life of an existing device" competitive alternative that would otherwise constrain the dominant firm's ability to require periodic hardware replacement. Software withdrawal — the practice of ending security updates and feature support for devices that are technically capable of continued operation, at timelines that are shorter than the useful hardware life — operates through the same mechanism. Congress must establish minimum software support period requirements for covered consumer devices, measured from the date of sale, as a condition of market access.

1. In re Apple Inc. Device Performance Litigation, No. 5:18-md-02827 (N.D. Cal.) (class action settlement, $310–500 million, approved 2020); multistate attorney general settlement ($113 million, 34 states, 2020). https://www.law360.com ↩

This policy recognizes that proprietary repair locks on medical devices impose patient safety risks and unnecessary costs on the healthcare system, and calls for legislation protecting independent biomedical repair. Hospital technicians who cannot service critical equipment because the manufacturer controls all repair access are forced to pay manufacturer prices for urgent repairs — costs that are ultimately passed on to patients.

Proprietary repair locks on medical devices impose patient safety risks and unnecessary costs on the healthcare system; independent biomedical repair must be protected by statute

Medical imaging equipment manufactured by GE HealthCare, Philips Healthcare, Siemens Healthineers, and their major competitors routinely uses proprietary software locks that restrict diagnostic calibration, preventive maintenance, and repair functions to manufacturer-authorized service personnel. Independent biomedical equipment technicians — who have historically provided a cost-effective, technically competent alternative to manufacturer service contracts — are locked out of critical maintenance functions by software authentication that serves no safety purpose the FDA requires. The result is that hospitals, particularly smaller and rural facilities, are forced to pay manufacturer service contract prices that can represent 10–15% of the original equipment cost annually, or face the alternative of equipment downtime when independent technicians cannot access the software tools required to complete maintenance.^[1]

The FDA's own position — as expressed in its 2018 discussion paper on device servicing — is that existing medical device regulations do not require repair restrictions that lock out independent technicians, and that the safety arguments advanced by manufacturers to justify their service monopolies are not supported by the regulatory framework.^[2] The safety argument advanced by manufacturers — that only factory-trained technicians can safely service complex medical devices — is contradicted by the decades of competent independent service performed by the biomedical technology community and by the FDA's own assessment. Independent repair of medical devices must be protected by statute, with manufacturers required to provide: service manuals and technical documentation; access to diagnostic software and calibration tools on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms; and replacement parts without discriminatory pricing or availability restrictions. The market for hospital medical device service must be opened to genuine competition; the current situation in which a handful of manufacturers control both the equipment market and the service market for hospital systems creates exactly the kind of vertically integrated captivity this pillar is designed to address.

1. International Association of Medical Equipment Remarketers and Servicers. (n.d.). Right to repair: Why it matters for healthcare. https://www.iamers.org/right-to-repair ↩
2. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2018, April). Remanufacturing of medical devices: FDA discussion paper. https://www.fda.gov/media/112268/download ↩

This policy establishes that non-compete agreements — contracts that prevent employees from working for competitors — are automatically illegal except in narrowly defined circumstances involving senior executives, and calls on Congress to codify the FTC's 2024 rule banning them by statute. Non-compete agreements trap workers in their current jobs by threatening them with lawsuits if they leave to work somewhere else or start their own business.

Non-compete agreements outside narrowly defined senior executive contexts are per se unlawful restraints of trade; Congress must codify the FTC's 2024 rule by statute

The Federal Trade Commission's April 2024 final rule banning most non-compete agreements — adopted after extensive notice-and-comment rulemaking with over 26,000 public comments — correctly identified that non-compete agreements function primarily as monopsony enforcement mechanisms: they prevent workers from accepting employment with competing employers, from starting competing businesses, and from using their skills and knowledge to seek better compensation and working conditions.^[1] A non-compete agreement is, from a labor market antitrust perspective, a contract that removes a worker from the competitive labor market for the duration of the agreement — eliminating the competitive pressure on the current employer to offer market wages and conditions. When approximately 18% of U.S. workers are bound by such agreements, including workers in sandwich shops, security guard services, and other low-wage positions with no access to proprietary information that could plausibly justify restraint of trade, the aggregate effect on competitive labor markets is significant and demonstrably harmful to wages.

A federal district court vacated the FTC's 2024 rule, holding that the Commission lacked substantive rulemaking authority under the FTC Act to issue a categorical ban.^[2] This platform does not accept the policy outcome that flows from this jurisdictional ruling. Congress must resolve the question by statute: a comprehensive federal ban on non-compete agreements, except in narrowly defined circumstances involving genuinely senior executives with documented access to trade secrets of specific and substantial commercial value, must be enacted as a matter of federal labor and antitrust law. The narrow exception must be defined precisely enough to exclude its application to the vast majority of workers currently subject to non-competes: it must require that the executive have vice-president level or higher authority, that the protected information be specifically identified, and that the geographic and temporal scope of the restraint be no broader than necessary to protect the specifically identified information. Garden-leave provisions — in which the employer continues to pay the worker during the non-compete period — should be the default for any permitted non-compete, ensuring that the economic burden of the restraint falls on the employer who claims it is necessary.

1. Federal Trade Commission. (2024). Non-compete clause rule (final rule), 89 Fed. Reg. 38342 (May 7, 2024). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/05/07/2024-09171/non-compete-clause-rule ↩
2. Ryan LLC v. Federal Trade Commission, No. 3:24-cv-00986 (N.D. Tex. Aug. 20, 2024) (vacating the FTC non-compete rule). https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68078823/ryan-llc-v-federal-trade-commission/ ↩

This policy makes wage-fixing and no-poach agreements between competing employers automatically (per se) criminal antitrust violations, requiring mandatory criminal referral, enhanced penalties, and the ability for affected workers to recover damages. When employers secretly agree not to compete for workers or to keep wages suppressed, workers lose income they would otherwise have earned.

Wage-fixing and no-poach agreements among competing employers are per se criminal violations of Sherman Act Section 1; mandatory criminal referral, enhanced penalties, and private worker recovery are required

The Department of Justice and FTC issued guidance in 2016 establishing that agreements among competing employers to fix wages or restrict the hiring of each other's employees are per se violations of Sherman Act Section 1 subject to criminal prosecution — the same standard that applies to price-fixing cartels in product markets.^[1] This guidance built on the factual record developed in the civil settlement of In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, in which Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar settled for $415 million in 2015 after evidence emerged of bilateral no-poach agreements among their chief executives that suppressed wages for highly compensated technology workers by eliminating competitive bidding for their services.^[2] The DOJ subsequently pursued criminal wage-fixing charges in United States v. Jindal (N.D. Tex.), marking the first criminal prosecution specifically for wage-fixing — a prosecution that established the principle even as the trial produced an acquittal on the wage-fixing count.

Criminal enforcement of wage-fixing has been inconsistent and penalties have been inadequate relative to the scale of harm. A firm that suppresses wages across thousands of workers through cartel coordination with competitors creates aggregate harm that dwarfs the penalties currently available. This platform requires: (1) mandatory criminal referral from the FTC to the DOJ Antitrust Division when wage-fixing or no-poach conduct is identified in merger review, civil investigation, or complaint intake, without discretionary declination on policy grounds; (2) Sherman Act criminal penalties for wage-fixing scaled to the aggregate wage suppression caused — a floor of 10% of the total wage bill paid to affected workers during the cartel period; (3) personal criminal liability for corporate officers and executives who participate in wage-fixing or no-poach agreements; and (4) a private right of action for workers who were employed in the affected market during the cartel period, with treble damages calculated from the difference between actual wages paid and the competitive wage that would have prevailed absent the cartel coordination.

1. U.S. Department of Justice & Federal Trade Commission. (2016, October). Antitrust guidance for human resource professionals. https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/903511/download ↩
2. In re High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, No. 5:11-cv-02509 (N.D. Cal.) ($415 million class settlement approved 2015). https://www.hightechemployeeantitrust.com/ ↩

This policy requires that geographic labor market monopsony — where one employer dominates hiring in an area and suppresses wages because workers have nowhere else to go — receive the same enforcement priority as product market monopoly, and presumes that mergers creating or reinforcing labor market monopsony should be blocked. A single dominant employer in a region has the power to set wages at whatever it chooses because workers have no competitive alternatives.

Geographic labor market monopsony must be treated with the same enforcement priority as product market monopoly; mergers that create or reinforce labor market monopsony are presumptively blocked

A worker in a geographic market where a single employer — or a small number of employers in a concentrated industry — dominates local employment faces a monopsony dynamic structurally equivalent to the exploitation consumers face from a product market monopoly. The worker who cannot practically relocate and who faces a single dominant employer in their occupation in their region has no competitive alternative that would allow them to capture the full competitive value of their labor. Monopsony power suppresses wages below competitive levels, reduces employment below competitive levels, and extracts value from workers through the same mechanism that product market monopoly extracts value from consumers: by eliminating the competitive alternatives that constrain pricing power. Economic research confirms that U.S. labor markets are substantially more concentrated than product markets on standard Herfindahl-Hirschman Index measures, and that this concentration has measurable downward effects on wages relative to competitive benchmarks.^[1]

The DOJ and FTC must incorporate labor market monopsony analysis into all merger reviews in industries where employment concentration is high, using the same analytical frameworks applied to product market concentration in horizontal merger guidelines. A merger between the two largest employers of a particular occupational category in a metropolitan statistical area — hospital systems in regions where healthcare employment is geographically concentrated, poultry processing firms in rural processing communities, or warehouse and logistics operators in distribution hubs — creates labor market harm independent of any product market effects, and that harm must be treated as an independent basis for blocking or conditioning the merger. The 2023 Merger Guidelines' incorporation of labor market effects into the analytical framework is an important step; this platform requires that labor market monopsony analysis be given equal weight to product market monopoly analysis, and that mergers producing significant increases in labor market concentration — as measured by HHI increases in the relevant occupational labor market — be presumptively blocked without requiring additional proof of specific wage suppression.

1. Dube, A., Jacobs, J., Naidu, S., & Suri, T. (2020). Monopsony in online labor markets. American Economic Review: Insights, 2(1), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20180150 ↩

This policy establishes that digital labor platforms with dominant market share in a local service area exercise monopoly buying power over gig workers, and that algorithmic wage-setting by those platforms constitutes wage-fixing that must be treated as such under antitrust law. When the app sets the fare, takes a cut, and no competing apps operate in the area, the platform effectively sets workers' pay with the power of a cartel.

Digital labor platforms with dominant market share in a local service market exercise monopsony power over platform workers; algorithmic wage-setting by dominant platforms is wage-fixing by a dominant buyer and must be treated accordingly

Digital labor platforms — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, Amazon Flex, and comparable services — coordinate labor supply through algorithmic task assignment, set compensation rates and surge multipliers unilaterally, and in some markets operate under exclusivity pressure that discourages workers from simultaneously operating on competing platforms. In metropolitan markets where a single rideshare platform controls more than two-thirds of the available rides, a driver who needs to earn income through ridesharing has no practical competitive alternative for the majority of their working hours. The platform sets the compensation rate, and the worker has the binary choice of accepting the rate or not working. This is the functional definition of monopsony: a buyer — in this case, the platform acting as buyer of labor — with no competitive constraint on the price it offers.

The legal misclassification of these workers as independent contractors — rather than as employees — reinforces the platform's monopsony power by denying workers the collective bargaining rights that are the primary institutional countervailing force against employer monopsony in labor markets where individual workers have no competitive alternatives. This legal question is addressed in ANTR-FRNC-0003; the antitrust dimension is independent: whether or not platform workers are legally classified as employees, a platform that controls a dominant share of the available work in a local market for a particular service is a dominant buyer of that labor and is subject to monopsony enforcement. Algorithmic wage-setting that determines compensation for all platform workers in a market simultaneously — without negotiation, without competitive market input, and without the ability of workers to collectively respond — is wage administration by a dominant buyer, and where the platform is dominant in the local labor market, it is the functional equivalent of wage-fixing by a monopsonist. The antitrust agencies must treat gig platform dominance in local labor markets as a monopsony enforcement priority, and platform mergers that would consolidate local rideshare, delivery, or logistics markets must be analyzed for labor market effects.

This policy calls for Congress to codify by statute that FTC commissioners can only be removed for specific, defined reasons — resolving the legal uncertainty created by the Trump administration's unlawful 2025 firing of commissioners. An FTC that can be crippled by presidential terminations whenever the administration disagrees with its enforcement priorities cannot function as an independent regulator.

FTC commissioner independence must be codified by statute with narrowly defined for-cause removal protection, resolving the constitutional confrontation created by the Trump administration's unlawful 2025 terminations

The Federal Trade Commission's effectiveness as an antitrust enforcement body depends on its structural independence from the executive branch. Independence — meaning that commissioners cannot be removed by the President solely for policy disagreement or political reasons — is what makes the FTC capable of enforcing antitrust law against economically and politically powerful interests without regard to the political interests of the administration in power. The Supreme Court's foundational ruling in Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) upheld for-cause removal protection for FTC commissioners, holding that Congress may constitutionally limit the President's removal authority over multi-member independent commissions performing quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions.^[1] For ninety years, this precedent governed the FTC's independence.

The Trump administration's January 2025 termination of Democratic FTC commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in apparent violation of this precedent created a direct constitutional confrontation over the independence of independent regulatory agencies — a confrontation whose resolution will determine whether antitrust enforcement is a function of law applied by an independent body or a political tool deployed and withdrawn at executive discretion.^[2] This platform requires legislative resolution of this confrontation in favor of independence: Congress must enact a statute explicitly providing that FTC commissioners may be removed only for cause, defined narrowly as neglect of duty, malfeasance in office, or conviction of a felony, and that policy disagreement with the President does not constitute cause for removal. The Seila Law LLC v. CFPB (2020) decision, which held that the for-cause removal protection for a single-director agency was unconstitutional, must not be read to undermine multi-member commission independence — the structural distinction between a single-director agency and a bipartisan multi-member commission is the distinction Humphrey's Executor was decided on, and Congress must make that distinction legally unambiguous in statute.

1. Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/295/602/ ↩
2. Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U.S. 197 (2020); see also Kang, C., & Vogel, K. P. (2025, January 28). Trump fires Democratic members of FTC and NLRB. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/technology/trump-ftc-nlrb-commissioners-fired.html ↩

This policy calls for FTC funding to be moved to a mandatory appropriation model tied to merger filing fee revenue, removing antitrust enforcement capacity from the annual appropriations battle. When Congress can defund antitrust enforcement simply by not passing a budget bill, powerful companies have a strong incentive to lobby for budget cuts rather than regulatory compliance.

FTC funding must be moved to a mandatory appropriation model tied to pre-merger notification fee revenue, removing antitrust enforcement capacity from the annual appropriations process

The Federal Trade Commission's enforcement capacity is determined by its annual appropriation, a funding mechanism that has been used historically — and can be used again — to starve enforcement budgets during periods of political opposition to antitrust enforcement. Congress has direct leverage over the FTC's ability to investigate mergers, litigate cases, and maintain the specialized staff and economic expertise required to challenge sophisticated antitrust violations: it can simply decline to appropriate adequate funds. An agency whose budget is subject to annual political negotiation cannot credibly commit to long-term enforcement of antitrust law against industries that have organized congressional support. The FTC's total annual budget — approximately $430 million in fiscal year 2024, funding an agency responsible for reviewing thousands of merger filings and pursuing civil antitrust enforcement against markets representing trillions of dollars in annual commerce — is insufficient for the scale of the agency's mandate and is structurally dependent on appropriations that can be reduced in retaliation for enforcement actions that displease powerful economic interests.^[1]

FTC funding must be moved to a mandatory appropriation model: the agency must be funded automatically as a defined percentage of pre-merger notification (HSR Act) filing fees collected in the prior fiscal year, with a statutory minimum floor sufficient to maintain current staffing and litigation capacity regardless of fee volume in any given year. This model has two structural advantages: it ties funding automatically to the merger activity the agency is required to review, and it removes enforcement capacity from the annual appropriations process that allows Congress to defund enforcement through budget riders without explicit floor votes. The model does not require any change to the underlying antitrust statutes; it requires only a change to the FTC's authorizing and appropriations legislation. Congress has used similar mandatory funding mechanisms for other financial regulatory agencies — the CFPB and OCC operate with funding derived from fees or assessments rather than annual appropriations — and the FTC's enforcement mandate is at least as important to competitive market integrity as the financial regulatory functions those agencies perform.

1. Federal Trade Commission. (2024). FY 2025 congressional budget justification. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/FY25CBJ.pdf ↩

This policy requires increasing criminal antitrust penalties to at least 10% of relevant annual revenue and adequately funding the DOJ Antitrust Division's criminal program, because current fines are too small relative to the profits companies earn from anti-competitive conduct. A fine that costs a major corporation less than a single day's profit is not a deterrent — it is a license fee for continued misconduct.

Criminal antitrust penalties are inadequate relative to the gains from modern anticompetitive conduct; Sherman Act maximum criminal fines must be increased to at least 10% of relevant annual revenue and the DOJ Antitrust Division's criminal program must be adequately resourced

Criminal prosecution of antitrust violations — price-fixing, bid-rigging, and market allocation agreements — is the most powerful deterrent available under current law, carrying the possibility of imprisonment for individual executives and criminal fines for corporations. The Sherman Act's current maximum criminal fine of $100 million per corporate defendant, or twice the gain or loss attributable to the offense if that amount exceeds $100 million, was established by statute in 2004.^[1] For industries where cartel conduct can sustain billions of dollars in excess profits over years or decades — pharmaceutical price-fixing, construction bid-rigging, financial market manipulation — a $100 million maximum fine may represent a fraction of the gain from the violation. When expected penalties are lower than expected gains, criminal prosecution fails as a deterrent. The rational corporation facing a 5–10% probability of prosecution and a maximum fine of $100 million will continue cartel conduct if the expected annual gain exceeds $5–10 million — a threshold reached quickly in concentrated industries.

This platform requires Congress to amend the Sherman Act to increase maximum criminal fines for corporations to at least 10% of the annual U.S. revenue derived from the commerce affected by the anticompetitive conduct, calculated for each year the conduct continued. This is a revenue-based floor — not a substitution for the twice-the-gain alternative, which is preserved — and ensures that penalties scale to the actual magnitude of the market affected rather than to a static dollar cap. Adequate DOJ Antitrust Division criminal program funding must accompany this increase in penalties: criminal antitrust investigation requires long-term, multi-year case development, economic expert analysis, and specialized prosecutorial experience that cannot be maintained at chronically inadequate funding levels. The Division's Leniency Program — which provides amnesty to the first cartel member to self-report and cooperate — must be maintained as a structural enforcement tool alongside increased criminal penalties; together, these mechanisms create both the deterrent of severe consequences and the incentive to defect from cartels by self-reporting.

1. Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-237, 118 Stat. 661 (2004); 15 U.S.C. § 1 (Sherman Act § 1 criminal penalties, as amended). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section1 ↩

This policy prohibits mandatory arbitration clauses from being used to block federal antitrust claims by consumers or workers, and voids class action waivers in antitrust disputes. Corporations use mandatory arbitration to prevent consumers and workers from joining together to challenge anti-competitive conduct — this policy ensures those challenges can proceed in court where they have real effect.

Mandatory arbitration clauses may not be enforced to foreclose federal antitrust claims by consumers or workers; class action waivers in antitrust disputes are void as against public policy

Private antitrust enforcement — through which injured parties may bring civil actions and recover treble damages plus attorneys' fees under Section 4 of the Clayton Act — is an essential complement to public enforcement by the DOJ and FTC, and historically has been responsible for larger total antitrust recoveries than government enforcement alone.^[1] The incentive structure of treble damages and mandatory attorneys' fees was deliberately designed by Congress to create private enforcement that does not depend on government enforcement budgets or enforcement priorities. However, mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer and employment agreements — enforced aggressively by corporate defendants following AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion (2011) — have been used systematically to prevent class action antitrust claims, forcing individual claimants into individual arbitrations where the economics of litigation make recovery impossible.^[2]

An individual consumer overcharged $50 per year by a price-fixing cartel has no economic incentive to pursue individual arbitration for that amount; the same consumer, aggregated into a class of millions of similarly situated consumers, has access to a recovery measured in hundreds of millions of dollars and legal representation that the economics of the case support. Class action waivers in mandatory arbitration clauses systematically eliminate this mechanism, converting the cartel's liability exposure from hundreds of millions in class damages to zero individual claims that are filed — because no rational individual pursues a claim worth $50 in arbitration. This is not a coincidence; it is the explicit strategic purpose of mandatory arbitration class action waivers. Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act to facilitate commercial dispute resolution between sophisticated parties; it did not intend to create a mechanism for cartels to immunize themselves from private antitrust liability by requiring their victims to waive class litigation as a condition of receiving services. No mandatory arbitration clause may be enforced to foreclose federal antitrust claims by consumers or workers; class action waivers in any agreement that is a precondition of receiving services in a market affected by conduct subject to federal antitrust law are void as against public policy under the Clayton Act's private enforcement provisions.

1. Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 15 (treble damages and attorneys' fees for private antitrust plaintiffs). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section15 ↩
2. AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) (Federal Arbitration Act preempts state-law unconscionability challenges to class action waivers in arbitration agreements). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/563/333/ ↩

This policy ensures that state attorneys general have explicit concurrent authority to enforce antitrust law and that federal law sets a floor — not a ceiling — on state antitrust standards. When federal enforcement stalls or is deliberately pulled back, states must be able to step in — this policy removes any legal uncertainty about their authority to do so.

State attorneys general must have explicit concurrent antitrust enforcement authority with no federal preemption of stronger state antitrust standards; the Sherman and Clayton Acts establish a federal floor, not a ceiling

State attorneys general enforcement of antitrust law has served as a critical structural check on anticompetitive conduct during periods when federal enforcement has been captured, defunded, or deprioritized. The New York Attorney General's landmark investigation of Microsoft in the 1990s preceded and amplified federal enforcement; multistate AG coalition actions on pharmaceutical price-fixing have pursued cases the DOJ and FTC declined to bring; and Texas and California AG investigations of Google's advertising market dominance have proceeded on independent state-law grounds that do not depend on federal enforcement priorities. This history demonstrates that state AG enforcement is not a redundancy to federal enforcement — it is a structural backstop that preserves enforcement capacity when federal institutions fail, and in the current political environment, it is indispensable. The California v. ARC America Corp. (1989) decision established that state antitrust claims by indirect purchasers are not preempted by federal antitrust law, preserving an important independent enforcement pathway.^[1]

Congress must codify the concurrent-enforcement principle affirmatively and comprehensively: (1) the Sherman Act and Clayton Act establish minimum standards — a federal floor — for antitrust protection in the United States; state antitrust laws providing stronger protections are not preempted by federal law, and state AG enforcement under state law is not limited by federal enforcement priorities or decisions; (2) state AGs are explicitly authorized to seek all available federal antitrust remedies — including structural relief, divestiture, and injunctions — in addition to state-law remedies, in cases where both federal and state antitrust laws apply; (3) the DOJ and FTC must establish a mandatory coordination protocol with state AGs that provides state enforcers with timely access to information gathered in federal investigations, requires consultation before federal closure or settlement of cases that state AGs are actively investigating, and does not permit federal agencies to override state enforcement decisions through consent decrees or regulatory settlements that purport to preclude state action. The federal government's antitrust enforcement posture in any given administration reflects that administration's political priorities; the structural independence of state enforcement from federal oversight ensures that antitrust law continues to be enforced as written even when the federal executive disagrees with it.^[2]

1. California v. ARC America Corp., 490 U.S. 93 (1989) (state indirect purchaser antitrust claims not preempted by federal antitrust law). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/490/93/ ↩
2. Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 26 (injunctive relief; state attorney general authority to seek federal antitrust remedies). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section26 ↩

This policy requires any cryptocurrency exchange controlling more than 30% of U.S. spot trading volume to structurally separate its exchange, custody, and market-making functions, and prohibits exchanges from acting as their own market makers without independent compliance oversight. A crypto exchange that simultaneously runs the marketplace, holds customer funds, and makes its own trades has the ability and incentive to manipulate prices at customers' expense.

Crypto exchanges controlling more than 30% of U.S. spot trading volume must separate exchange, custody, and market-making functions structurally

Any cryptocurrency exchange controlling more than 30% of U.S. spot trading volume in any asset class is subject to enhanced antitrust scrutiny by the DOJ Antitrust Division and FTC. Structural separation of exchange, custody, and market-making functions is required for exchanges above this threshold. No exchange may serve as its own market maker without a Chinese wall enforced by independent compliance oversight. Vertical integration that uses captive market-making to disadvantage competing traders is prohibited.

The collapse of FTX in 2022 illustrated how vertically integrated crypto conglomerates — combining exchange, custody, proprietary trading, and market-making under common ownership — create structural conflicts of interest that cannot be managed by disclosure alone. Alameda Research, FTX's affiliated trading firm, had privileged access to the exchange's order book and customer funds, giving it systematic advantages over all other market participants. Structural separation — the same principle applied to commercial and investment banking under Glass-Steagall and to broker-dealer custody under securities law — is the only structural remedy that eliminates this conflict rather than merely managing it. The 30% threshold triggers enhanced scrutiny, not automatic structural relief; the antitrust agencies retain discretion to require separation below that threshold based on conduct evidence.

This policy subjects decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols with more than $10 billion in total value locked — meaning assets stored in the protocol — to systemic risk designation by regulators, requires mandatory independent security audits before major protocol changes, and holds developers personally liable for known vulnerabilities they fail to disclose or fix promptly. Large DeFi protocols can trigger broader financial instability — and the developers who build and control them must be accountable for the safety of systems holding billions of dollars.

DeFi protocols with total value locked above $10 billion are subject to FSOC systemic risk designation with mandatory smart contract audits and developer fiduciary liability for known vulnerabilities

Decentralized finance protocols with total value locked above $10 billion are subject to systemic risk designation by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). Designated protocols must submit to mandatory independent smart contract audits on any material protocol change. Protocol developers retain fiduciary liability for known security vulnerabilities they fail to disclose or remediate promptly after identification.

The "decentralized" label does not eliminate the systemic risk that concentrated financial activity creates. DeFi protocols with total value locked in the tens of billions of dollars are functionally equivalent to systemically important financial institutions in terms of the cascading effects of a protocol failure or exploit on the broader crypto ecosystem and interconnected traditional financial markets. The Dodd-Frank Act's FSOC designation authority — used to designate systemically important non-bank financial companies under 12 U.S.C. § 5323 — provides the existing statutory framework for this type of oversight without requiring entirely new legislation. Fiduciary liability for known vulnerabilities prevents the common practice of deploying protocol upgrades with known security flaws, then disclaiming responsibility when exploits occur.

This policy prohibits any company from owning both content production and cable or broadcast distribution networks in the same market, requires structural divestiture within three years, caps broadcast television ownership at 30% of U.S. households, reinstates the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban, and sets criminal penalties of up to $10 million per year for willful violations. A company that owns the studio making the news, the cable network carrying it, and the broadband line delivering it has total control over what people watch and how they receive it.

Companies May Not Own Both Content Production and Broadcast/Cable Distribution Networks

No single entity may own or control both: (a) television, film, or news content production and (b) cable or satellite distribution networks, broadcast station groups, or internet service providers serving the same geographic market; the FCC and DOJ must order structural divestiture of combined content-distribution ownership within three years. A single company may not own broadcast television stations reaching more than 30% of U.S. television households; the FCC's 39% national audience reach cap must be restored and enforced. Ownership of a daily newspaper and a television or radio station serving the same market (newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership) is prohibited; existing combinations must divest within five years. Willful violation of these structural limits by a licensee or its officers is subject to criminal fines of up to $10 million per year of violation; any person harmed by unlawful content-distribution integration must have a private right of action for injunctive relief and actual damages.

The FCC relaxed media consolidation rules multiple times since 2017. Nexstar, Sinclair, and other broadcast groups now own hundreds of local TV stations. Six corporations control approximately 90% of U.S. media. Structural separation — the same remedy applied to AT&T's Bell System in 1984 — is preferred over behavioral consent decrees that cannot realistically prevent integrated conglomerates from using distribution leverage to favor their own content.

This policy requires all commercial broadcast TV and radio stations to air at least two hours of locally produced news daily, establishes a $1 billion annual fund to support nonprofit local journalism, mandates license non-renewal for national chains that eliminated local newsrooms, and sets criminal fines of up to $5 million per year per station for noncompliance. National broadcast chains have eliminated local newsrooms while continuing to hold broadcast licenses that obligate them to serve the communities whose airwaves they use.

Broadcast Licensees Must Provide Substantive Local News Coverage or Lose Their License

All commercial television and radio broadcast stations must air a minimum of two hours per day of locally produced news programming as a condition of FCC license renewal; "locally produced" means news content produced by journalists based in the station's licensed market — not syndicated national content relabeled as local. The FCC must establish a Local Journalism Emergency Fund distributing $1 billion annually in competitive grants to nonprofit local news organizations, public radio stations, and community media outlets; fund recipients must be locally owned and independent of national broadcast groups. Broadcast licenses held by national chains that have eliminated local newsrooms must not be renewed; willful noncompliance with local news production requirements is subject to criminal fines of up to $5 million per year per station; any community broadcaster denied fair access to licensing in violation of these requirements must have a private right of action for injunctive relief.

The U.S. has lost over 2,500 local newspapers since 2005. Journalism "deserts" — communities with no local news coverage — have expanded dramatically. Sinclair Broadcasting was found to have required local stations to air centrally produced political commentary without local editorial oversight. A broadcast license is a grant of public airwaves spectrum; the public has the right to define the terms of that grant, including minimum obligations to serve the local market.

This policy calls for increasing federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to at least $25 per person annually — about $8 billion total — appropriated on a three-year cycle to insulate public media from year-to-year political pressure, with bipartisan board appointment requirements, a prohibition on recent political appointees serving on the CPB board, and a ban on advertising on NPR and PBS. Public media funded at roughly $1.40 per person — far below peer democracies — cannot provide the independent, noncommercial journalism that a healthy democracy requires.

PBS and NPR Must Be Funded at $25 Per Capita and Insulated From Political Interference

Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting must be increased to no less than $25 per capita annually (approximately $8 billion) , appropriated on a three-year advance funding cycle to insulate from year-to-year political pressure; CPB funding may not be reduced by more than 5% in any single year without a two-thirds vote of Congress. CPB board members must be confirmed with bipartisan Senate support and may not have served as political appointees or party officials within five years of appointment; the President may not remove CPB board members without cause. NPR and PBS may not carry commercial advertising; their editorial independence from government, political parties, and corporate donors must be codified in statute.

The U.S. spends approximately $1.35 per capita on public broadcasting. Canada spends approximately $29 per capita; the UK (BBC) approximately $80 per capita. Advance multi-year appropriations — the same mechanism used for military hardware procurement — prevent year-to-year budget hostage-taking that compromises editorial decision-making.

This policy requires any social media platform or search engine with more than 50 million monthly U.S. users to publicly disclose how it ranks and recommends news content, publish annual transparency reports, allow vetted researchers access to platform data, and announce algorithm changes affecting news distribution within 30 days — with FTC and state enforcement and a private right of action. Platforms that silently change the algorithms determining what news millions of people see are making decisions with enormous public consequences and no accountability.

Social Media Platforms Must Disclose News Ranking Algorithms and Allow Researcher Access

Any social media platform or search engine with more than 50 million monthly U.S. users must: publicly disclose the general criteria used to rank, recommend, deprioritize, or remove news content; provide an annual transparency report showing aggregate data on how news content from different sources was distributed and the criteria applied; allow vetted academic researchers access to platform data under a qualified researcher access program; and provide a public appeals process for news publishers whose content is systematically suppressed without explanation. Algorithmic changes that materially affect news content distribution must be disclosed to the public within 30 days of implementation. Failure to comply is an unfair or deceptive act or practice enforceable by the FTC and by state attorneys general; any news publisher or researcher denied required access or transparency disclosures must have a private right of action for injunctive relief and attorney fees.

This policy calls for a federal shield law providing absolute protection for journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources in any federal proceeding, a federal anti-SLAPP law allowing early dismissal of lawsuits filed to silence journalists with up to $50,000 in penalties, and criminal penalties of up to $500,000 plus imprisonment for federal officers who violate shield rights. Without these protections, journalists face financial ruin for reporting on the powerful — chilling the investigations the public depends on most.

Federal Shield Law Protects Journalists From Being Compelled to Reveal Sources

Congress must pass a federal shield law providing absolute protection for journalists — including digital journalists, freelancers, and non-traditional media — from being compelled by any federal court, grand jury, or government agency to disclose the identity of a confidential source or to produce unpublished materials obtained during newsgathering; this protection applies in all civil and criminal proceedings and extends to metadata and communications records. A federal anti-SLAPP statute must allow any defendant in a lawsuit arising from journalism, public interest reporting, or public participation to bring an early dismissal motion; if the court finds the lawsuit was filed to chill protected speech, the plaintiff must pay attorney fees and a civil penalty of up to $50,000. Violation of a journalist's shield protections by any federal officer or agency is subject to criminal penalties including fines up to $500,000 and imprisonment; any journalist whose shield rights are violated must have a private right of action for damages and injunctive relief.

The U.S. is the only major democracy without a federal journalist shield law. SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) have been used by corporations and wealthy individuals to bankrupt news organizations. Thirty-five states have anti-SLAPP statutes; the absence of a federal equivalent means federal court provides no protection, allowing forum-shopping to defeat state protections.

This policy prohibits any digital platform with more than 50 million monthly U.S. users or $25 billion in U.S. revenue that also competes on its own marketplace from favoring its own products in rankings, using third-party seller data to copy successful products, or tying access to distribution advantages to purchases of its own goods — with violations subject to disgorgement of profits, divestiture, 10% of U.S. revenue in civil penalties, criminal prosecution, and treble damages in private suits. A marketplace operator that also sells competing products and controls what rivals see in search results is using referee power to win the game it is supposed to be officiating.

Dominant Digital Platforms May Not Favor Their Own Products in Rankings, Search Results, or Recommendations

Any digital platform with more than 50 million monthly active U.S. users or $25 billion in annual U.S. revenue that operates both a marketplace, search engine, or distribution platform AND sells competing products or services through that platform must not: rank, feature, or recommend its own products or services more favorably than competing offerings with equivalent relevance; use non-public data collected from third-party sellers or users to develop competing products; or tie access to the platform's distribution advantages to purchases of the platform's own products. Violations are per se Sherman Act violations subject to: disgorgement of ill-gotten profits, structural remedies including divestiture, civil penalties of 10% of annual U.S. revenue, criminal prosecution of responsible executives, and a private right of action by harmed competitors and consumers with treble damages.

Federal courts found that Google illegally self-preferenced its own search results to favor Google Shopping over competitors. Amazon has been accused of using seller data to develop competing products and then self-preferencing those products in search results. Cross-reference: ANTR-PLTS-0001 (structural prohibition), ANTR-ENFC (enforcement mechanisms).

This policy requires any messaging or social media platform with more than 100 million monthly U.S. users to implement open interoperability standards within two years — using protocols like ActivityPub or Matrix — allowing users of competing services to message, follow, and port their social graph and content history, with daily civil fines of $1 million per day for non-compliance and criminal penalties for executives who knowingly obstruct implementation. Social media network effects lock users in because leaving means losing everyone you follow — requiring interoperability means users can switch services without losing their connections.

Dominant Messaging and Social Media Platforms Must Allow Users to Communicate Across Platforms

Any messaging or social media platform with more than 100 million monthly active U.S. users must implement open, standardized interoperability protocols that allow users of competing services to: send and receive messages to and from users of the dominant platform; follow and view content from accounts on the dominant platform; and port their social graph, followers, and content history to competing services. Interoperability requirements must be implemented within two years using open standards such as ActivityPub, Matrix, or successor protocols designated by NIST. Platforms may not impose technical barriers, rate limits, or commercial terms that effectively prevent interoperability. The FTC must establish an Interoperability Enforcement Unit; non-compliant platforms are subject to criminal penalties for executives who knowingly obstruct compliance, daily civil fines of $1 million per day until compliance is achieved, and a private right of action by competing services denied interoperability.

Network effects — the tendency of communications platforms to become more valuable as more users join — create structural barriers to competition that cannot be overcome by new entrants alone. The EU's Digital Markets Act requires interoperability for designated "gatekeeper" platforms. Cross-reference: ANTR-PLTS-0003 (data portability obligation), ANTR-ENFC (enforcement mechanisms).

This policy requires any mobile operating system or app store with more than 50% market share to allow alternative payment processors and competing app stores without penalty, bans commissions that differ based on which payment system is used, caps commissions at 15% for developers earning less than $1 million annually on the platform, and provides civil penalties, criminal prosecution for executives directing retaliation, and treble damages for violations. App store commissions — typically 30% — are set unilaterally by platforms that control the only legal way to distribute apps on their devices, giving them unchecked power to extract whatever they choose.

Dominant App Store Operators May Not Require Use of Their Payment System or Charge Anti-Competitive Commissions

Any mobile operating system or app distribution platform with more than 50% market share in its category must: allow app developers to use third-party payment processing systems without penalty or surcharge; allow users to install apps from competing app stores or directly from developers (sideloading) without technical barriers or voided warranties; not charge commissions that differ based on whether the developer uses the platform's payment system; and not retaliate against developers who use competing payment systems by demoting apps, delaying review, or imposing additional terms. App store commission rates for in-app purchases may not exceed 15% for developers with less than $1 million in annual revenue on the platform. Violations are subject to: FTC civil penalties, criminal prosecution of executives who direct retaliatory conduct, injunctive relief, and a private right of action by app developers with treble damages.

Apple and Google each charge up to 30% commissions on app store transactions, generating tens of billions in annual revenue from developers. Courts in multiple jurisdictions have found aspects of Apple's App Store policies to be anti-competitive. Cross-reference: ANTR-PLTS-0002 (structural app store obligation), ANTR-ENFC (enforcement mechanisms).

This policy presumes that acquisitions by dominant digital platforms — those with more than 30% market share — of any company with more than 1 million users or $10 million in revenue that could plausibly compete with them are anti-competitive, shifts the burden to the acquirer to prove by clear and convincing evidence that competition will not be harmed, and requires FTC review of completed acquisitions from the past ten years. Facebook acquired Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become rivals; Google acquired dozens of potential competitors — this policy closes the loophole that allowed those competition-killing acquisitions.

Acquisitions of Potential Competitors by Dominant Digital Platforms Are Presumptively Anticompetitive

Any acquisition by a digital platform designated as having dominant market position — defined as more than 30% market share in a relevant market or designation by the FTC or DOJ — of a company that: (1) competes or could plausibly compete in the acquirer's market; or (2) has more than 1 million active users or $10 million in annual revenue; is presumptively anticompetitive and subject to enhanced antitrust scrutiny. The burden of proof shifts to the acquirer to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the acquisition will not harm competition; the standard "efficiencies" defense is insufficient without quantifiable, verifiable evidence of consumer benefit that could not be achieved through internal development. The FTC must review all such acquisitions, including completed acquisitions from the past ten years, for potential retrospective challenge. Acquisitions completed in violation of this provision are subject to forced divestiture, criminal penalties for executives who structured acquisitions to evade review, and a private right of action by injured competitors.

Between 2010 and 2019, the five largest tech companies acquired more than 400 companies. Economists have identified a pattern of "killer acquisitions" in which dominant firms acquire potential competitors primarily to shut them down rather than develop them. Cross-reference: ANTR-PLTS-0004 (structural killer acquisition rule), ANTR-ENFC (enforcement mechanisms).

This policy requires all corporations with more than $1 billion in U.S. revenue or more than 5,000 U.S. employees to obtain a federal charter within five years, mandating annual public benefit reports, requiring 40% of board seats to be elected by employees, maintaining worker-to-CEO pay ratios no greater than 100:1, and authorizing charter revocation — resulting in mandatory dissolution — for corporations convicted of three or more federal crimes in ten years, with criminal penalties of up to $500 million and 20 years imprisonment for executives who falsify reports. Corporate charters are a privilege granted by the public — this policy makes that privilege conditional on meeting basic standards of accountability to workers, communities, and the law.

All Corporations With More Than $1 Billion in Annual Revenue Must Obtain a Federal Charter — Demonstrating That Their Operations Provide Net Public Benefit — With Charter Revocation Available as a Remedy for Repeated Violations of Federal Law, Consumer Rights, or Environmental Standards

Congress must: (1) establish a Federal Corporate Charter Act — requiring all corporations with annual U.S. revenue above $1 billion, or with more than 5,000 U.S. employees, to obtain a federal charter within 5 years — replacing their existing state incorporation for purposes of federal regulatory accountability; (2) require all federally chartered corporations to: (a) publish an annual Public Benefit Report disclosing: impacts on employees, communities, and the environment; compliance with all federal laws; any criminal or civil enforcement actions; executive compensation ratios relative to median worker pay; (b) elect at least 40% of their board of directors by employees — codetermination — consistent with European corporate governance models; (c) maintain worker-to-CEO pay ratios no greater than 100:1; (3) authorize the DOJ to revoke the federal charter of any corporation that: (a) has been convicted of three or more federal criminal offenses within 10 years; (b) has been found to have systematically violated consumer, environmental, or labor laws causing widespread harm; (c) has engaged in fraudulent financial reporting affecting more than 10,000 shareholders or employees; (4) charter revocation results in: (a) mandatory dissolution and asset distribution; (b) prohibition on any successor entity controlled by the same executives from receiving a federal charter for 10 years; (5) criminal penalties — fines up to $500 million and imprisonment up to 20 years for executives — for falsifying Public Benefit Reports or evading charter requirements; and (6) a private right of action for any worker, consumer, or community harmed by a chartered corporation's violations — with charter revocation proceedings available as an additional remedy — and damages of three times actual harm plus attorney's fees.

The concept of corporate chartering as a condition of doing business dates to the founding era of American corporate law. Germany's codetermination law, which gives workers seats on corporate boards, is credited with contributing to lower income inequality and more stable employment in German corporations. Cross-reference: ANTR-ENFC (enforcement mechanisms), ANTR-CRPT (cryptocurrency market structure).