Understanding Antitrust Laws and Their Impact on Economic Freedom

Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.

prices down. And what anti trust does is it prescribes some really simple, flexible rules so that you don't have monopolies, right, which is when one company controls, you know, the provision of a product or a service in the market, and when you don't have the undo accumulation of power, right, corporate power in a market. There are different ways that

you can accumulate that power. Sometimes it's by mergers, right, And so anti trust is applied to mergers that are notified in the United States, typically only the biggest mergers. And the reason it's really important to understand anti trust for your audience, for every American to understand anti trust, is because it is so fundamental to our full participation

in our democracy. And if I can say just a few words about what I mean about that, I think that black Americans have shed blood to give meaning to this fundamental proposition that all people are created people. Our forefathers have fought for social rights, for political rights, for example,

the right to vote. But as I've thought about this work more and really gotten in the books and read a lot of the thought beforehand, what I realized is that so many civil rights leaders understood that social and political rights standing alone would not be sufficient to protect our full participation and our full citizenship in this country. That you really need economic liberty as that third plank

to protect all of your other liberties. And there's really incredible scholarship and writing from WBDU boys, m Okay, Bayard Rusten, and others who really understood this. And so that's why I'm so pleased to be able to talk to all of you and your audience about why I think antitrust is good for the entire country, but in particular Black.

from the financial crisis. Some people lost a lot and never quite made up around some people lost a little bit, and maybe you're doing a little bit better. And there's a sense in this country for a lot of people that economic opportunity is not what it used to be. And the tech platforms are interesting because that sentiment that I just described actually is true regardless of who you are,

your demographic or your political leanings. Right, so people on the left and the right are concerned about economic opportunity in this country. And for a lot of folks who are self styled conservatives, they're thinking about the tech platforms and the power that they have to censor people, the power that they have to deplatform people, the power to

control what ideas even make it to the public. And in the case of Google, for example, which I can talk about because we filed monopolization cases against Google, one of which went to trial last year and where we look forward to closing arguments in the spring, and another one that's going to trial this year. And so I think that some companies are both big and do things

that are against the law. And in the case of Google Search, that is a case about a company that has we'll say ninety plus percent share of all the Internet searches that are conducted every day in this country, and they entered into agreements with.

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Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens have been arrested. If you are here illegally, your next you will be fined nearly one thousand dollars a day, imprisoned, and deported. You will never return. But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border and families will be protected.

concept that people call network effects and such. But again, let's zoom out and talk about why that should matter to all people. You know, when you go and conduct a search, you might be looking at healthcare information, you might be thinking of reproductive information, you might be thinking about really intimate personal decisions about how you are going to live your life and how you're going to you exercise your rights as a consumer.

serve up very harmful information. And again, that affects the experience of citizenship in this country, and it's a way that all of us feel the effects and ramifications of corporate power in like very basic ways in our everyday life.

And then whatever the result is, we'll figure out how do we get more people involved in understanding just the ramifications of some of the things you're talking about on an everyday basis.

So way back in July twenty twenty one, the President signed an executive order where he said that it would be the policy of his administration to take into account competition and the benefits of competition policy and antitrust in

every single agency. So every again, the the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Communications Commission and more are all a part of this effort to make sure that they are taking into account competition principles in their everyday work for all of us at the Any Trust Division, or I have the distinct privilege of serving as the second highest ranking official and working with a staff of more than eight hundred people who are dedicated to faithfully

serving the public and bringing the benefits of competition to everyday people. We're thinking about just how we talk to the public right. Anti trust for a long time was really technocratic. It was steeped and kind of murky economics. And that's really a shame, because as I've gone back and engaged with the history, it's clearer to me than

ever that anti trust is for all of us. And so, for example, we are trying to make sure that we're using plain language in our complaints, our guidance documents, or making sure that we're not privileging a small few who already kind of know what's going on at the Anti Trust Division and down at the Federal Trade Commission, which is our sister agency, and that we're setting up access for everyday people to get the information that they need. And so we go out and talk to as many

people as we possibly can. I'll give you just one example. We spoke to a group of farmers that we're coming to Washington for the day just to talk about how we think about competition and agriculture. And we're going out to colleges and universities, We're going out to conferences, We're

talking to content creators. We're just talking to as many people as we possibly can because we feel so deeply that anti trust is for the people, and we as public servants, are obligated to protect every citizen in this country, regardless of whether you have power, whether you don't.

Secretary of Homeland Security. Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over one hundred thousand illegal aliens.