Antitrust enforcement is one of the most pressing issues facing
America today—and Amy Klobuchar, the widely respected senior senator
from Minnesota, is leading the charge. This fascinating history of the
antitrust movement shows us what led to the present moment and offers
achievable solutions to prevent monopolies, promote business
competition, and encourage innovation.
In a world where
Google reportedly controls 90 percent of the search engine market and
Big Pharma’s drug price hikes impact healthcare accessibility,
monopolies can hurt consumers and cause marketplace stagnation.
Klobuchar—the much-admired former candidate for president of the United
States—argues for swift, sweeping reform in economic, legislative,
social welfare, and human rights policies, and describes plans, ideas,
and legislative proposals designed to strengthen antitrust laws and
antitrust enforcement.
Klobuchar writes of the historic and
current fights against monopolies in America, from Standard Oil and the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act to the Progressive Era's trust-busters; from the
breakup of Ma Bell (formerly the world's biggest company and largest
private telephone system) to the pricing monopoly of Big Pharma and the
future of the giant tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
She begins with the Gilded Age (1870s-1900), when builders of fortunes
and rapacious robber barons such as J. P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, and
Cornelius Vanderbilt were reaping vast fortunes as industrialization
swept across the American landscape, with the rich getting vastly richer
and the poor, poorer. She discusses President Theodore Roosevelt, who,
during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920), "busted" the trusts, breaking
up monopolies; the Clayton Act of 1914; the Federal Trade Commission Act
of 1914; and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950, which it strengthened the
Clayton Act. She explores today's Big Pharma and its price-gouging; and
tech, television, content, and agriculture communities and how a
marketplace with few players, or one in which one company dominates
distribution, can hurt consumer prices and stifle innovation.
As
the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust,
Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Klobuchar provides a
fascinating exploration of antitrust in America and offers a way forward
to protect all Americans from the dangers of curtailed competition, and
from vast information gathering, through monopolies.
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