Washington, D.C. — The American Economic Liberties Project today released a new report “Democratizing Markets: How the Biden Administration Can Advance an Antitrust and Competition Policy Agenda for Working People, Independent Businesses and Resilient Communities,” alongside a new, interactive database of M&A activity that took place between January 2017 and January 2021.

“It is now widely accepted that corporate concentration is extreme and contributing to a broad range of economic and social ills. Now, the question is what we should do about it,” said Sarah Miller, Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project. “We’re offering an answer to that question by providing a clear roadmap for the Biden administration and Congress to protect workers, entrepreneurs, independent businesses, and communities across the country.”

Monopolization is systemic across the American economy in large part because corporations spend billions of dollars every year on mergers and acquisitions. While the Biden Administration has pledged to review, and possibly reverse, mergers and acquisitions that took place in recent years, basic, usable information about which corporations have engaged in M&A activity is largely unavailable to the public. The dataset published by Economic Liberties today aims to address that problem, documenting more than 1,300 significant mergers in an interactive format that allows the user to search by corporation, deal size, and industry.

Investigating and, as appropriate, reversing certain mergers will be key to securing an equitable economic recovery. But addressing concentration is a government-wide responsibility, one that extends both to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission and to other institutions like Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and Defense.

Accordingly, in “Democratizing Markets” Economic Liberties recommends numerous polices that can be used across executive agencies to structure fairer, more competitive, and vibrant markets—from expanding existing antitrust actions against Google and Facebook to reviving dormant regulatory and enforcement tools across government. The new report also lays out a path for Congress to provide strong leadership in strengthening antitrust law, reinvigorating enforcement, and arresting and reversing the concentration of corporate power.

To read “Democratizing Markets: How the Biden Administration Can Advance an Antitrust and Competition Policy Agenda for Working People, Independent Businesses and Resilient Communities,” click here. 

To search Economic Liberties’ new database of M&A activity from 2017-2021, click here. 

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.