(Drivebycuriosity) - The election changed America´s political and economic landscapes. It seems that President Biden´s war on business will come to an end. Biden had been advertised as a moderate but short after his inauguration he initialized a fundamental left shift of America´s industrial politics and brought an activist into power: Lina Khan.
Biden led the Senate believe that the widely unknown Khan will become just one of five Commissioners of America´s mighty antitrust authority Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But instead he announced her as Chair, giving her the power to rule one of America`s most powerful agencies.
Biden`s protege does not have any business experience nor is she educated as an economist, but the Khan made her name by working for left-wing organizations and by a personal crusade against Amazon that made her the Joan of Arc of the progressives and is maybe the real cause for Biden`s choice (drivebycuriosity).
The FTC was founded to protect the interests of the consumers and tried to punish corporations for bad services, low quality & and too high prices (consumer welfare). Chair Khan does not care about consumers, she has other targets. She is part of the New Brandeis movement (after Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1916-1939), who strives for a fundamental change of America´s economic structure and implies antitrust to expand the role of the government in the U.S. economy significantly ( pbwt.com dailyjournal promarket reason). Khan and her fellow Brandeisians prefer "that the government, rather than the private sector, orchestrates the functioning of the economy" ( ftc.gov).
Biden protege Khan declared consumer interests as irrelevant. She argued - in an article for a Marxist paper - that antitrust must be reconfigured toward the redistribution of economic and political power and away from concerns regarding price (lpeproject realclearpolicy). Since the Khan leads the FTC the authority represents a Marxist ideology, explained former FTC-Commissioner & Khan colleague Christine S. Wilson (ftc.gov ). The Brandeisans want to replace the market process of supply and demand by a continuously regulated environment where market outcomes are constantly being reviewed by bureaucrats who don`t understand economics and ignore history (truthonthemarket ).
Since taking the command of the FTC the Khan has fundamentally changed the FTC and how America approaches competition & industrial policy ( (insidesources politico truthonthemarket twitter marginalrevolution). The Khan claims that she has the "Rule Making Authority" and that she can decide what is & isn't "unfair competitive conduct" ( ftc.gov twitter uschamber ).
Lina Khan tries to gain control over America´s
largest corporations and to be in charge of their business. She
wants to tell them what they can do and what not, how much they charge
their customers and how they deal with their business partners (nationalreview ). The
Khan follows Lenin and declared: "Market structure is deeply political.
One reason is that all markets are governed by law. The structure of a
market at any given time is the product of political decisions—made and
not made—about how players in that market will be allowed to use their power" ( law.duke).
Since in office the FTC Chair launched a series of law suits against American corporations including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Walmart, Altria & Illumina and has also intimidated and harassed them with a flood of inquiries. Since Twitter is owned by Elon Musk, Khan`s FTC has been orchestrating an aggressive campaign against X, formerly known as Twitter. "The agency sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter in a span of 10 weeks that contained more than 350 specific demands, thus creating a "substantial burden on the company's operations." ( npr.org judiciary nytimes).
The purpose of these law suits and inquiries is to gain control over America´s largest corporations and to be in charge of their business ( driveby). Even though the Khan is not democratically elected, she uses her power to throw a lot sand into the gears of America´s successful companies, which belong to the engines of the US economy. Her law suits and inquiries are occupying management capacities and slowing decision processes - making business more complicated and costly and reduce their ability to further innovate. Because the Khan is punishing corporations for being efficient and for keeping costs low she is slowing economic growth, raises price level and reduces living standards of low income households who depend on purchasing cheap goods. Innovators and startups are getting discouraged when they know that strong growth will get punished.
FTC chair Khan - and her fellow Brandeisians - claim that efficiency, that leads to low prices, is unfair. She declared in an interview: “The word efficiency doesn’t appear anywhere in the antitrust statutes.... It’s not that any business practice that increases welfare or increases efficiency is fine" (promarket. ). The Brandeisians declare that low prices destroy competition, hurt workers and ruin the environment ( vox ).
In 2022 Lina Khan released her 5-years plan that reads like a Communist Manifest (ftc.gov ). It includes support equity for historically underserved communities, which include
Black Americans, Latinos, members of religious minorities, lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and persons adversely affected by persistent
poverty or inequality. Apparently Khan`s antitrust focuses on race and
income inequality (crowell ). The
neglect of consumer interests is also announced in Khan`s Strategic Goal 2:
"The FTC’s efforts to prevent and police unfair methods of competition
focus on preventing anticompetitive mergers and business practices
through enforcement". Apparently the Khan wants to protect competitors which leads to less competition and will harm the consumer.
It is not surprising that the Khan still works with far-left groups and grants them influence on America`s antitrust politics, like the Law
and Political Economy (LPE), an organization that claims to “work to
understand the relationship between market supremacy and racial, gender,
and economic injustice; to articulate the relationship between
capitalism and devaluation of social and ecological reproduction; and to
explore the distinctive ways that law gives shape to and legitimates
neoliberal capitalism, ranging from dynamics of financialization to the
relation between the carceral state and capitalism” ( based-politics).
A recent Staff Report of the House Committee On Oversight And Accountability reports that Lina Khan conspired with foreign powers against American interests ( oversight.house.gov): "The FTC has spent taxpayer dollars and used its resources to ensure EU regulations opposed by the U.S. business community are effectuated and protected. This is evidenced in the
FTC’s involvement in the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA)". Congressman Darrel Issa accused Khan of turning the FTC into a bully that would make America less competitive (youtube ).
Khan´s war on American business has to end.
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