Latest news with #AbigailSlater
Miami Herald
07-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Feds seek info on ‘unfair,' ‘anticompetitive' practices in live entertainment industry
Business Feds seek info on 'unfair,' 'anticompetitive' practices in live entertainment industry May 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. government seeks information from Americans about practices or conduct deemed "anticompetitive" in the entertainment industry, officials announced Wednesday in a public inquiry. The U.S. Justice Department will "continue to closely examine this market and look for opportunities where vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws can lead to increased competition that makes tickets more affordable for fans while offering fairer compensation for artists," U.S. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater of the department's Antitrust Division said in a release. DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission launched its joint inquiry to identify "unfair and anticompetitive" practices, conduct or ticket marketing in the live concert and entertainment industry as part of an executive order signed March 31 by U.S. President Donald Trump that targeted unfair practices in the live entertainment market. Trump's order, signed during an Oval Office event with musician Kid Rock, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FTC chair to "ensure that competition laws are appropriately enforced" in the concert and entertainment industry. It further directs the FTC to "rigorously enforce" the 2016 Obama-era Better Online Tickets Sales Act, and also directed Bondi, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and the FTC chair to identify specific legislative or regulatory solutions. The BOTS Act allows the FTC to go against individuals and companies utilizing bots to buy concert tickets in bulk and resell them, and eliminated the practice of excess ticket scalping that raises prices for sporting events or theater shows. "Many Americans feel like they are being priced out of live entertainment by scalpers, bots and other unfair and deceptive practices," FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the federal agencies invited U.S. citizens to submit public comment and other information on "harmful practices" and potential regulation or legislation to protect consumers, which officials say will be used to ready a report for the White House with listed recommendations. Officials pointed to U.S. consumers, artists, small businesses, trade groups, industry analysts as scores of other entities invited to give feedback to authorities as affected groups by perceived anticompetitive practices in the industry. The federal government, along with 40 state and district attorneys general, is currently litigating a civil antitrust lawsuit brought on in 2024 againstLive Nation Entertainment's subsidiary Ticketmaster for alleged "monopolization" and other "unlawful conduct" that allegedly thwarted competition in markets across America's live entertainment markets. The public, meanwhile, will have 60 days to submit comments no later than July 6. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved. This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 5:07 PM.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's 'America First Antitrust' Policy Will Put America Last
Abigail Slater delivered her first public address as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice on Monday, where she argued for an "America First Antitrust" policy based on patriotism, textualism, and respect for precedent and the rule of law. Speaking at the University of Notre Dame, Slater claimed her antitrust regime will empower "America's forgotten men and women to shape their own economic destinies in the free market." In reality, her populist antitrust agenda will retard American innovation and economic growth. Slater, who was an economic policy adviser to Vice President J.D. Vance when he was in the Senate, opened her remarks by thanking President Donald Trump, who has "assailed the use of 'market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans,'" for giving her "the chance to defend the American people's rights at this critical juncture in our history." Slater explains that the Trump administration is "undertaking deregulation that will unleash innovation in AI and other technologies" but celebrates the DOJ's recent victory in the Google ad tech case, saying, "Our teams more often than not win the battle on behalf of the American people." Embroiling Big Tech firms in expensive antitrust suits stifles innovation by decreasing capital available for R&D and discouraging startup acquisition. Slater also condemns the "global labor arbitrage" for trading "American jobs for cheap manufacturing abroad" and "growing profit margins [that] diverted the economic gains for many goods from American consumers and workers to our coastal elites." But the facts contradict Slater's story: The percentage of U.S. households making $35,000 or less decreased from 1967 to 2017, while those making $100,000 or more increased, as explained by Mark Perry, senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. She also references the decline of manufacturing since the late 1960s, but nationwide manufacturing output steadily increased from 1970 to 2007, where it has since stabilized. Slater's skepticism of free markets was most prominently displayed when she explained the principles that will guide her approach to antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department. To Slater, the first objective for antitrust enforcers should be protecting individual liberty from government and corporate tyranny. While Slater rightly identifies freedom of choice as necessary for flourishing, she wrongly likens today's dominant firms to the government-granted monopolies of the colonial period, such as the British East India Company. Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law & Economics, says "It is very strange to compare a government-granted monopoly to any of the relevant 'monopolies' people worry about today." Ethan Yang, an adjunct research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, agrees, telling Reason, "Many of the so-called dominant firms that are in the antitrust crosshairs today have achieved their positions almost entirely on enterprise." The British East India Company only "maintained its position because it was granted a legal monopoly on all trade occurring in a certain part of the world by royal charter." Second, she believes antitrust enforcement should respect binding precedent and the original meaning of the statute. Slater says antitrust agencies should only enforce laws actually passed by Congress—not laws they wish Congress had passed. Slater invokes this principle to argue that "antitrust laws protect labor market competition." Antitrust has been used in the context of labor, explains Yang, but "its application is tricky because…it is much more difficult to classify as a market which is necessary to measure competition and the alleged anticompetitive effects of restrictive labor practices." Moreover, Slater's claim that labor antitrust is deeply rooted in common law tradition and Supreme Court precedent is wrong because "most of the labor antitrust has happened in the last 15 years," according to Albrecht. Slater's third principle is that antitrust litigation can serve as a substitute for regulation. Slater likens the former to a scalpel and the latter to a sledgehammer. Even though Slater rightly recognizes that "anti-competitive regulation can be co-opted by monopolies and their lobbyists" and "sap the free market of dynamism," she does not admit that antitrust's susceptibility to capture and do the same. The empirical record unambiguously shows that "antitrust, at least before the development of the consumer welfare standard, was employed to help competitors and a form of rent seeking," says Albrecht. Yang adds that, while antitrust enforcement may be less susceptible to corporate capture than regulation, it is "highly ideological and partisan because lawsuits can be launched at will by…agency leaders who often take direct orders from the President." Slater credits New Right intellectuals Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, and Sohrab Ahmari, founder of Compact magazine, for "driving the realignment in antitrust policy." Slater's "wish to move away from [a] deeply technocratic and elitist mindset" confounds her support of the New Right, whose economic program is explicitly technocratic, viewing trade and industrial policy as tools policymakers can and ought to use to remake the economy from on high. Slater is right that "personal liberty and economic liberty are closely connected." But her activist antitrust ideology will violate liberty, not protect it. The post Trump's 'America First Antitrust' Policy Will Put America Last appeared first on
Straits Times
21-04-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Google faces trial in US bid to end search monopoly
The outcome of the trial could fundamentally reshape the internet by unseating Google as the go-to portal for online searches. PHOTO: REUTERS WASHINGTON - Alphabet's Google faces a historic trial on April 21 as US antitrust enforcers in Washington seek to force the tech giant to sell off its Chrome browser as part of a bid to restore competition to the market for online search engines. The outcome of the trial could fundamentally reshape the internet by unseating Google as the go-to portal for information online. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) hopes it will prevent Google's dominance from extending to artificial intelligence. DOJ attorney David Dahlquist said during his opening statement that DOJ officials were present in the courtroom to show that the case, started under President Donald Trump and carried forward under former president Joe Biden, has 'the full support of the DOJ both past and present.' Google plans to appeal the final ruling in the case. 'When it comes to antitrust remedies, the US Supreme Court has said that 'caution is key.' DOJ's proposal throws that caution to the wind,' Google executive Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a blog post on April 20. Assistant Attorney-General Abigail Slater rejected that assessment in remarks outside the courthouse on Monday morning. 'You know what is irresponsible? Leaving Google's monopoly abuse unaddressed,' she said. US District Judge Amit Mehta is overseeing the three-week trial. The US Department of Justice and a coalition of 38 state attorneys-general have proposed far-reaching measures designed to quickly open the search market and give new competitors a leg up. Their proposals include ending exclusive agreements in which Google pays billions of dollars annually to Apple and other device vendors to make Google the default search engine on their tablets and smartphones. Google would also have to license search results to competitors, among other requirements. And it would be made to sell its Android mobile operating system if other remedies fail to restore competition. Prosecutors have said they expect testimony about how Google's agreements to be the default search engine on mobile devices have hampered distribution efforts by artificial intelligence companies. Witnesses from Perplexity AI and OpenAI are expected to take the stand. Google sees the proposals as extreme, and said the court should stick to limiting the terms of its default agreements. US Assistant Attorney-General for the Antitrust Division Abigail Slater (centre) and Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche speak to members of the media outside federal court in Washington. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG The US$1.9 trillion (S$2.5 trillion) tech company has been subsidising browser makers such as Mozilla by paying to remain the default search engine. Cutting off that financial support could threaten their existence, Google says. And ending payments to device makers would raise the cost of smartphones, the company claims. Google plans to call witnesses from Mozilla, Verizon and Apple, which launched a failed bid to intervene in the case. Few potential buyers of Chrome have the same incentive as Google to maintain the free open-source code that underpins it, and which others including Microsoft use as a basis for their own browsers, the company says. The trial comes on the heels of a win for the DOJ in a Virginia court on April 17 where a judge ruled in a separate antitrust case that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in advertising technology. Meta Platforms is currently facing its own antitrust trial over the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
USA Today
09-04-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Cal-Maine Foods, largest US egg producer, under scrutiny in Justice Department price probe
Cal-Maine Foods, largest US egg producer, under scrutiny in Justice Department price probe Show Caption Hide Caption Egg prices not dropping fast enough for consumers Farmers are dropping egg prices but the trickle down effect hasn't made its way to the consumer yet as millions of eggs are still being imported from other countries. Fox - 10 Phoenix The largest U.S. egg producer, Cal-Maine Foods CALM.O, is cooperating with a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into high egg prices and whether producers have conspired to raise them, the company said on Tuesday. The DOJ sent Cal-Maine a civil investigative demand last month, the Ridgeland, Mississippi-based company said in a regulatory filing, adding that the eventual scope, duration and outcome of the investigation could not be predicted at the time. Egg prices going down? A dozen eggs averaged $3 last week as costs decline Abigail Slater, head of the DOJ's antitrust division, has said the division will prioritize enforcement against anticompetitive conduct in U.S. consumer markets. Egg prices have declined in recent weeks from record highs, though their wholesale cost is still up 60% from this time last year at $3 per dozen, according to USDA data. Weaker demand and a lull in new cases of bird flu have helped cool prices, analysts said. Industry experts said Friday that tariffs levied by the Trump administration could boost the price of imported eggs. Reporting by Savyata Mishra in Bengaluru and Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Maju Samuel and Cynthia Osterman
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Largest US egg producer cooperating in Justice Department price probe
(Reuters) -The largest U.S. egg producer, Cal-Maine Foods, is cooperating with a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into high egg prices and whether producers have conspired to raise them, the company said on Tuesday. The DOJ sent Cal-Maine a civil investigative demand last month, the Ridgeland, Mississippi-based company said in a regulatory filing, adding that the eventual scope, duration and outcome of the investigation could not be predicted at the time. Abigail Slater, head of the DOJ's antitrust division, has said the division will prioritize enforcement against anticompetitive conduct in U.S. consumer markets. Egg prices have declined in recent weeks from record highs, though their wholesale cost is still up 60% from this time last year at $3 per dozen, according to USDA data. Weaker demand and a lull in new cases of bird flu have helped cool prices, analysts said. Industry experts said Friday that tariffs levied by the Trump administration could boost the price of imported eggs.
