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Democrats’ push for a new era of antitrust enforcement, explained

By  |  August 17, 2017

Posted by VOX

Democrats’ push for a new era of antitrust enforcement, explained

By Matthew Yglesias

As congressional Democrats rolled out their new “Better Deal” agenda for the American people, even some in their own ranks were surprised by the level of interest in the party’s new agenda on antitrust and competition policy.

One reason for that is that even some members of Congress may not be aware of how significant the commitments are that Democrats are making. After all, to a casual observer/member of Congress, invocations of the interests of “workers” and “small businesses” can easily seem like boilerplate rhetoric — the mom and apple pie of economic policy. But they actually seal the deal on a significant transformation of the party’s approach to antitrust issues, one that’s actually been building for some time.

Democrats are saying, with increasing clarity, that they want to overthrow a legal paradigm that’s existed for about 40 years and which held that consumer welfare — typically as measured by consumer prices — is the sole relevant metric for making antitrust policy.

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