What Donald Trump And Elizabeth Warren Have In Common

OK, so it’s not the notion of building a wall built to keep people out to be paid for by Mexico.  And it’s not wild enthusiasm for Brexit. But still, in a year where seemingly anything goes — in politics, at least — a speech earlier this week brought together strange political bedfellows.

We’re looking at you, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and you, Donald Trump.

Sen. Warren said earlier in the week in remarks delivered in Washington that Google, Amazon and Apple are among a triumvirate of huge tech players that use size to their advantage, with an intent to “snuff out competition.”

Scale is important, and so of course is technology. But Warren said that those two competitive advantages are being used as sledgehammers against smaller firms. Warren offered up a few examples, stating that smaller and upstart tech competitors are largely frozen out of true tech jousting.

Google, said Warren, has the dominant search engine in place that allows for the firm to hobble rival offerings that compete with Google Plus. Apple, she stated, has been shoring up its Apple Music dominance, short-circuiting efforts by other firms to make a go of streaming music. Amazon, she added, has been able to leverage its standing as the biggest bookseller to constrain other publishers looking for toeholds online.

Different but not so different from remarks that Trump himself made in May, seemingly complete with thinly veiled threats, as to his own view that Amazon has “a huge antitrust problem … Amazon is getting away with murder tax wise.”

Bluster and bluff may become more concrete in a Trump administration. In a Clinton administration we might expect a more measured approach to monopolies and limitations of reform and intervention.

While personal agenda might in this case try to trump (pun intended) traditional ways of looking at business, in terms of prices, innovation and any number of variables, the end result may be the same as touched on in Warren’s exhortations.

The gimlet eye of the government will focus on competition and promoting competition, but the question remains as to how effective intervention may be. But in the meantime, there’s a little bit of bemusement to be had in a thus far topsy-turvy campaign when Warren and Trump find common ground.