NY TIMES NATIONAL BEST SELLER
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.
