Senator Josh Hawley unveiled a new proposal that would strengthen anti-trust laws in dozens of U.S sectors such as tech, media, and banking.
“This country and this government shouldn’t be run by a few mega-corporations.” [The Republican Party] has got to become the party of trust-busting once again. You know, that’s a part of our history,” the Missouri Senator told Axios.
Hawley’s “Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act” would ban mergers and acquisitions by firms with a market cap greater than $100 billion, lower the threshold for prosecution under existing laws, replacing the prevalent “consumer harm” standard with one that prioritizes “the protection of competition,” require companies that lose federal antitrust lawsuits to “forfeit all their profits resulting from monopolistic conduct,’ and allow the Federal Trade Commission to designate and regulate “dominant digital firms” in different online markets.
“Hawley’s plan is more than a salvo against Silicon Valley. Its rules on mergers, for instance, would cover dozens of U.S. giants in virtually every economic sector, from banking and health to retail and media,” Axios adds.
