What makes progressive pro-competition policy just as critical today as progressive antitrust policy? What makes a pro-competition agenda an inclusive-economy agenda? When I want to ask such questions, I pose them to Senator Amy Klobuchar. This present conversation focuses on Klobuchar’s book Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. Klobuchar is the senior Senator from Minnesota, the first woman from that state elected to the US Senate, and Chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights. In 2019, a Vanderbilt University analysis ranked her the “most effective” Democratic Senator in the 115th Congress. She is also the author of Uncovering the Dome and The Senator Next Door, and was a 2020 candidate for US President.
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ANDY FITCH: Many Democrats and many progressives today might not consider themselves strong advocates of capitalist competition. So could you introduce this book’s vision for vibrant labor and consumer markets, for high innovation, low prices, a thriving middle class — all fueled by free and fair competition? And could you make the case for why progressive readers should embrace that agenda?
AMY KLOBUCHAR: Monopolies hurt people in so many ways — whether you take insulin, or use an EpiPen, or pay for cable service, or want to keep your data private, or search for an online travel deal but gradually realize that just two companies control 90 percent of what you see. In each of these cases, with only one or two firms in town, you have very little leverage as a consumer.
Similarly, as a small-business owner, you might put your life into getting started. But once you try to scale up at all, and to compete with the dominant companies, you can find it almost impossible. That puts the American dream out of reach for many of us, especially for minority- and women-owned small businesses.
