Washington, D.C. — Regulators and enforcers kicked-off of the American Economic Liberties Project’s 2024 Anti-Monopoly Summit with speeches on how they’re fighting corporate power across the economy and delivering victories for working families across food, healthcare, housing, and more.

Over the course of the morning, speakers celebrated the movement’s many wins over the past year while dissecting the challenges ahead. They emphasized the importance of standing strong to protect consumers, workers, and businesses in the face of countless and relentless attacks from corporate giants.

“We’re fighting hard to stop the monopolists from using anticompetitive tactics to crush competition,” said Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. “We’re protecting Americans from hidden junk fees to keep them out of tens of billions of dollars a year. We’re holding individual executives accountable when they break or conspired to break the law, and we’re taking on mergers that would raise prices…and showing the American people what it looks like to have a government that’s not afraid to fight for them.”

“Proper enforcement of the antitrust laws makes a difference in the lives of people across the country, period, full stop,” said Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. “People struggling to afford rent, groceries, find meaningful work—they all depend on antitrust enforcement. We have taken more than 150 significant actions on behalf of the American people.”

“We need to realize that when we try and use the laws on the books, lawyers and lobbyists will organize and swarm to fight,” said Rohit Chopra, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “We have to make sure we soldier on day after day after day…We’re solving real problems that are affecting [consumers’] financial lives.”

“It’s all about protecting the little guy and gal in a world where market power, monopoly power, and concentrated power is all too often aligned against them,” said Jared Bernstein, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. “We will never act to enhance the power of the powerful.”

“Drug prices were in the single digits [as a percentage of healthcare spending] from a percentage standpoint in the ’80s,” said Jake Frenz, CEO of SmithRx. “Now 20-30% of healthcare spending, and PBMs have become immovable…Big incumbents push out the competition in a way that’s anticompetitive.”

“We are on the precipice of change,” Frenz added. “What worries me is just going forward thinking the market is going to fix itself.”

“Our mission is to resurrect the law as written, and interpreted by the courts, and to think about markets as they actually exist—and not dull away things like power,” said Doha Mekki, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. 

“People are really struggling to pay for their regular essentials…corporate landlords are using junk fees and not being transparent about the cost of rent,” said Arizona Representative Analise Ortiz. “It is time for politicians to deliver on issues that we know people are demanding.”

“More recently, companies that maybe have not been so litigious are seeing that, ‘I can band together with other small companies like like myself, in a class action and try to remedy some of these harms,” said Swathi Bojedla, Partner at Hausfeld LLP. “It hasn’t been a dirty word to bring a class action case anymore, and that’s really helping move forward the law.”

Tune into the 2024 Anti-Monopoly Summit here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.