industries found that not only were a majority of sectors more concentrated, but the market shares of the top four firms in each industry grew roughly by a quarter, from 26 percent in 1997 to 32 percent in 2012. For example, a March 2016 analysis by The Economist of 900 U.S. When Trump spoke on the campaign trail about “power structure,” he was likely speaking in part to the fact that, over the past thirty years, corporations have been growing larger and more dominant. Was Trump going wobbly on antitrust? Or more troubling still, was Trump improperly intervening in a law enforcement process? With growing evidence that America may in fact have a serious antitrust problem, knowing the answers to these questions has arguably never been more important.

Inevitably these meetings invite questions. In a stark departure from Trump’s earlier rhetoric, here was the President-elect, just two months out from his election, greeting the heads of the very interests he had just denounced. If permitted, the merger will significantly consolidate the seed and chemical market, potentially resulting in higher prices, less innovation, and less choice. That was followed by a meeting with the heads of Monsanto, America’s largest seed and chemical company, and Bayer, the German chemical and drug behemoth, two companies also set to merge shortly. The telecom giant is looking to merge with Time Warner in a massive $85 billion deal that could upend the media industry with notable ramifications for the current balance of power between consumers, content creators, and cable providers. The first meeting was with the CEO of AT&T, the very company he had singled out during the campaign. Not only did he appear to demonstrate an acute awareness of economic concentration, but he made clear that his Administration would be a bulwark against such dominance what Trump had called the “the power structure I’m fighting.”Īnd yet, a week before taking the oath of office, the then-President-elect met with the heads of three large companies with pending antitrust cases before the U.S. He whacked AT&T’s merger with Time Warner calling it “ too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.” Of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC, Trump declared, “ Deals like this destroy democracy.” Trump went after Amazon, calling it a “ huge antitrust problem” and asserting that Jeff Bezos, its founder, had purchased The Washington Post to protect the company and its “monopolistic tendencies.” Trump targeted the pharmaceutical industry saying, “Pharma has a lot of lobbies, a lot of lobbyists, a lot of power.”Īlmost Rooseveltian in some of his rhetoric, Trump seemed, at the time, to have tapped into something. During the election, Donald Trump took everyone by surprise when he came out swinging against consolidated economic power.

Never trump monopoly tycoon