Welcome to the FTC UMC Roundup for the middle of July. As we sit between the Fourth of July and August recess, the first images from the James Webb space telescope are a nice way to put the day-to-day grind of antitrust law into perspective. In part, that’s my way of saying that as Congress rushes towards recess, POTUS is out of the country, and several Senators are fighting Covid (we hope all get well soon), it hasn’t been the busiest week in antitrust law. But it’s also a useful framing for this week’s headline.
This week’s headline: Just as the Webb telescope peers back into the history of the universe, this is a week to look back into recent competition history: the one year anniversary of the President’s Executive Order on competition policy. Aspen Digital hosted a discussion about the Order with National Economic Council director Brian Deese. As one would expect, the discussion started with brief remarks in which Deese was able to very briefly outline the Order’s very several impacts over the past year.
Deese’s remarks were followed by a Q&A hosted by NYT reporter Cecilia Kang. Kang pressed Deese on a few topics. She asked how the recent Major Questions Doctrine ruling in West Virginia v. EPA affects the administration’s thinking about competition policy. Deese’s response – undoubtedly the correct one – is that the administration is looking for areas where there is bipartisan legislative interest in Congress. She asked whether the administration would ask Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to move on pending antitrust legislation (that is, AICOA); when Deese dodged the question about Schumer, she asked again. Curiously, Deese refused to mention Senator Schumer, instead saying that the administration has been working with the bill’s sponsors, Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). (Ben Brody has a piece on the pressures being brought to bear upon Schumer to act on AICOA.)
Deese’s National Economic Council colleague Tim Wu offered some comments on Deese’s speech on Twitter, explaining that the Executive Order has “become a means of trying ensure that competition policy is in line with our macro-economic policy goals.” “In a sense, the agencies are doing microeconomic competition policy, while the Competition Council has an eye on macro effects, and is setting micro priorities from that perspective.”
Continuing with this week’s lede that there’s not much going on: AICOA continues to go nowhere, fast. Supporters of the bill are lobbying the intelligence community to assuage concerns that it could harm national security interests. A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded that “the [Intelligence Community] does not weigh in on the merits of policy options.” Conservative continue to support AICOA as a tool for cracking down on content moderation policies – contrary to Democratic assurances that it can’t be used in that way. And Access Now has sent a letter to Congress on behalf of various global NGOs arguing that AICOA is necessary to address Big Tech’s human rights violations facilitated by its “reign over the world.” Antitrust law truly is everything to everyone.
Advocacy aside, AICO continues to appear to be dead bill stalling. Cristiano Lima at the Washington Post did a whip call of its own, finding “the number of senators willing to publicly say at this point they back the bills is well short of 60.” Importantly, this includes several senators who had previously publicly supported the bill. Adam Kovacevich walks through the challenging calculus: Senator Klobuchar is focused on getting Republicans to support the bill, and is losing Democratic support along the way. He also screams the loud part out louder: “It’s awfully hard for AICOA backers to claim the bill doesn’t impact content moderation when MAGA conservatives … just come right out and say they’re backing the bill because it would stop Apple/Amazon from banning Parler.”
Lest we forget about small businesses, let’s not forget about small businesses: AICOA would be bad for them, too.
The irony of it all is mercatus uber alles. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon may be scaling back its private-label brands.
Is anything going on at the FTC? Surprisingly little. Perhaps everyone’s getting ready for the next open meeting. It’s not yet on the calendar, but rumors are flying that rulemakings could be on the agenda.
A lack of activity, however, won’t keep bad news out of the FTC. In what is truly heartbreaking, if not unsurprising, news, under Chair Khan the FTC has fallen from one of the best to one of the worst federal agencies to work for in the latest “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.” It’s not just FTC employees who have questions about Khan’s leadership. Leah Nylen reports that the US Chamber of Commerce has sued the FTC, asking for disclosure of information under FOIA that the Commission has refused to provide. The Chamber recently prevailed in its efforts to require the Commission to disclose its operations manual.
What should you be reading and watching during this lazy month of July? Well, you could start with contributions to the Truth on the Market FTC UMC Rulemaking Symposium. We have had recent contributions summarizing chapters from Dan Crane’s recent book on the topic. These chapters were presented at a recent CCIA/Concurrences conference, recordings of which are also now online. TechFreedom is hosting its 2022 Policy Summit on July 20 and on July 27 Punchbowl is hosting a conversation with Representative Eric Swalwell on “the importance of privacy and security in existing and new technologies.”
Signing off with a recommended deep read: Adam White helps to contextualize West Virginia v. EPA and the Major Questions Doctrine in the broader scheme of the Court’s recent jurisprudence. It’s easy for those in the trenches to focus on what individual opinions mean for specific agencies and issues. But these cases are dots in a much larger mosaic of shifting jurisprudential and political theory.