President Donald Trump talked like an economic populist, promising to protect consumers, small business owners and workers against rampaging corporations, but it was all talk, says the NY Times, just like it was in his first term.
“The Trump administration is decimating the federal agencies that police corporations and protect workers and consumers. Even as it has delivered large tax breaks to corporations, it is seeking to undermine unions and to strip workers of legal protections,” said the Times. “And under Mr. Trump, there is mounting evidence that the government is cynically wielding its antitrust authority — one of the most important checks on excesses of corporate power — as a means of punishing its enemies, rewarding its friends and consolidating Mr. Trump’s political authority.”
When the Trump administration required Paramount to hire a “bias monitor” for its CBS News division and to forswear diversity, equity and inclusion programs before it could merge with Skydance this was not regulation in the public interest. Nor was it in the public interest for the company’s decision to fire a late-night comedian who frequently poked Trump.
“It was a mixture of the Republican campaign against diversity initiatives and Mr. Trump’s campaign to pressure media companies to cover him more favorably, said the Times.
And even as it squeezes Paramount, Trump’s F.C.C. is working to clear the way for a media merger that would “blow past” an F.C.C. rule restricting companies from owning stations that reach a combined total of more than 39 percent of U.S. households. Nexstar’s merger with Tegra will give it access to 80 percent of households, allowing the company to impose higher prices for advertising without competition.
“… [A]uthoritarian regimes have often relied on the concentration of corporate power to consolidate political power,” writes the Times. “The consolidation of media ownership makes the government more powerful, because it is easier to pressure a few big companies than a fragmented host of independently owned stations.”
In July, Trump’s Justice Department fired two top deputies after they objected to the department’s decision to allow the technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise to acquire one of its chief rivals, Juniper Networks.
“Hewlett Packard hired a number of lobbyists with close ties to Mr. Trump, who negotiated with aides to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, bypassing the department’s antitrust lawyers,” said the Times.
And Trump wants companies to be able to use noncompete clauses that ban employees from moving to better-paying jobs. Businesses had challenged Biden’s opposition to the wage-suppressing tactic, but in September, the Trump’s Federal Trade Comision said it would abandon efforts to defend President’s Biden’s ban on noncompete clauses. Th F.T.C. is also scrapping the Biden administration’s antitrust suit of Pepsi, which argued that the company was offering better deals to Walmart than to small mom-and-pop grocers, giving small companies a competitive disadvantage. In fact, Trump’s people are prepared to flush the Robinson-Patman Act, which protects small businesses from this kind of unfair competition by big firms.
“Under the cover of populist rhetoric, Mr. Trump is subverting the nation’s longstanding commitment to those principles. In his hands, laws created to limit the concentration of economic and political power are being used to further its concentration,” the Times said.
Read the New York Times editorial at this link.