everybody thank youum so glad that you can be here welcometo the Aspen Institute uh welcome tothose of you who are here with us atAspen Institute headquarters in DC uh abill welcome to those who are watchingus via live stream on YouTube and alsoto C-SPAN audiences my name is VivianSchiller I am executive director ofAspen digital we are a program of theAspen Institute focused on theintersection of Technology media anddemocracy we are so incredibly pleasedum not just to have all of you here butto welcome Brian diese uh here to ourheadquarters Brian is the director ofThe White House National EconomicCouncil uh in that capacity he advisesPresident Biden on domestic andinternational economic policy andcoordinates the economic agenda of theBiden Harris Administration during theObama Biden Administration Dee served asan acting director of the Office ofManagement and budget and deputydirector of the National EconomicCouncil and he is here today to shareupdates on competition policy on behalfof the Biden Administration soover to youthank you uh thank you Vivian and thankyou to the Aspen Institute for uhhosting today and for the ongoing rolethat you play in advancing the publicDialogue on issues of consequence forthe countrythank you Cecilia for being here and touh to all of you here and on screen forbeing part of this conversation uhspotlighting the issue of competitionpolicy which we certainly believedeserves greater Spotlight and hopefullytoday will be part of thatum so I wanted to spend some time todaytalking to you about where we’ve comewhere we are and where we’re going withrespect to competition policyum in the Biden Administration and it isan appropriate moment to do so becauseit was just a little over a year agothat President Biden signed the historicexecutive order on competitionum and for many of us who are there arein the room at the time will recall thathe he articulated both the opportunityand the challenge implicit in theEnterpriseum uh in uh in Joe bidenesque terms hesaid the heart of American capitalism isa simple idea open and Fair competitionuh but he also warned that capitalismwithout competition isn’t capitalismit’s exploitationum and uh as we sat there in in the inthe White House it certainly dawned onme that it’s not the first time that anAmerican president has trained uh hisfocus on competition of coursethree uh Teddy Roosevelt confronted aneconomy with industry after industrydominated by trusts and then FranklinRoosevelt after him faced a highlycartilized economy that was strugglingto recover from the Great Depressionand in their own ways both Roosevelt’stransformed antitrust enforcement intheir time and set precedence for risingto this challengeand I think both Roosevelts alsounderstood something important which isthat antitrust policy doesn’t operate ina vacuum it’s interwoven with the fabricof the economyum and I learned well on this point uhfor for a minute because it it certainlyis a through line to a lot of how we areapproaching things if you look at youknow Teddy Roosevelt he’s of courseremembered for tresposting and inparticular against railroads MeatPackers standard motor oil in the courtsum but he had an Insight that wasbroader which is that not only was itnecessary to vigorously enforceantitrust lawsbut it was also critical to reshape theregulatory frame to work with Congressto create rules of the road rules of therail in some context keep early commoncarriers from using their Marketposition to privilege incumbents anddiscriminate against new entrantsum and this this basic Insight I thinkis uh more relevant today uh than everuh we obviously face an economy withchallenges that are impossible for theRoosevelts to contemplate in their timeuh but there are familiar Echoes aboutthis need for a broader uh approach tocompetition policyuh and for President Biden um as acandidate and then as an uh earlypresident having a strong competitionpolicy was and is an indispensable partof an economic strategy for the 21stcentury for the new and emergingchallenges we faceum and he believes and has directed allof us to look at driving structuralchange to promote competition across theeconomyout of a conviction that doing so willgenerate more innovationgreater productivity more opportunity inthe country while lowering prices forconsumers and increasing wages forworkersum we have to recognize that for decadesthe competitive attributes of oureconomy have been attribute moreIndustries have become less competitiveboth consumers and workers have beenleft with fewer optionsand reversing these Trends is a verysignificant taskum it is akin to the task of moving theproverbial aircraft tanker to move inanother Direction but now one year inwith one year under our belt to theexecutive order we can start to see whatit looks like to turn the ship uh in theright directionwe’ve already delivered on many keypromises we have some importantannouncements coming soonuh and I think under the direction ofthe executive order and through theWhite House competition Councilum which I’ll speak to we are changinghow the government approachescompetition policy and how that isembedded in our overall economicprocessingso uh what I’m hoping to do today isjust to give you a little bit of a of aa deeper dive into how we diagnose theproblemum the work that we’ve done and thenwhere we want to take uh this work goingforward including the challenges that wefaceum I do want to pause for a second onthe diagnosis of the challenges thatwe’re facing because it is integral tohow the bite Administration hasapproached cognition policyum it starts from a growing body ofacademic research that has demonstratedour economy suffering from a loss ofcompetition and Rising corporateconcentration six years ago when Iserved in the Obama uh by Administrationhas mentioned my colleagues at theCouncil of economic advisorsum sounded the alarm in this contextaround what they described as interestincreasing industry concentrationincreasing rents accruing to few firmsand lower levels of firm entry and labormarket Mobilityandover the course of the last six yearsthe body of research around thoseconcerns is even and they emanate from astark reality which is that over theprior decadesconcentration has increased in more thanthree quarters of U.S Industrieswhile both investment and labor share ofthe economy uh decreased and thisincurred during a period of lowproductivity growth and Risinginequalityand at the core of this is the problemin which economists refer to as Marketpowerand over this period of years carefulwork by Leading thinkers includingJonathan Baker Fiona Scott Morton NancyRose has documented the rise of MarketpowerI I think a particularly strikingconclusion comes from a landmark studydone just a couple of years ago by JohnCuoco which surveyed the impact ofnearly four dozen major mergersmore than 80 percent of those mergersled to price increases the average priceincrease was around 10 percent and evenmore dramatic in some Industries likehospital care and Airlinesand these Studies have had on the upenda long-held assumption in some academicquarters that mergers generally orindeed mergers inherently increaseefficiency in lower pricesand I think we can comfortably say thatthe best research does notuh doesn’t doesn’t support that uh thatyou know de facto assumption and thatmust inform our approach and it must uhbe the basis of our effortsRecent research has also helpedunderscore how a lack of competitionhurts workers and I will say this issomething that is particularly importantto President Biden and has deeplyinformed our approach uh you look atwork of economists like Jose Azarayodamarinesko who just joined theadministration Marshall steinbaum EricPosner we see more clearly how feweremployers competing over the same talentpool reduces employees bargaining poweruh we recently published a study in theadministration from our TreasuryDepartment that found that the lack ofLabor Market competition decreases wagesby roughly 20 as compared to a fullycompetitive marketuh and this is one of the ways in whichlack of competition is exacerbated ourinequality challengein addition competition could dampenInnovation uh the Empirical researchfavors a competition policy thatencourages rival companies to reducecosts strength and quality develop newproducts while also retaining therewards for Innovationum it is an old saying but one thatdeserves re-upping in this context nopressure no diamondsum in short our competition challengesare Rippling across our economy they areimpeding our workers from achievingtheir full potentialthey are holding our consumers and smallbusinesses backand our understanding of thesechallenges is deeper today than it everhas been Thanks to this body of researchand a lot of that is importantlyin-depth and very detailed academic workbut one way I find to try to wrap thisall up to somebody if they say well whatdoes that all mean is uh is this is astudy by Thomas Phillips Philippine thattried to aggregate all those harms bothon the consumer side and the labor sideand said what is the impact on higherprices and lower wages and found that alack of competition means that for themedian family uh the median Americanhousehold it costs them about fivethousand dollars a yearand so at the end of the day an economythat isn’t as competitive as it can beand isn’t delivering the way that itcould be means that that uh family interms of higher prices and lower wagesis five thousand dollars shortum that’s real money and that’s what’sanimates our work uh at the end of thedayso it was against this backdrop and withthe help and standing on the shoulders alot of this work that the Presidentissued uh his executive order uh thismonth a year agouh and this order has galvanized agovernment-wide effort to promotecompetition across our economy but atits core it did three basic thingsfirst it directed very specific agencyactionto go at concrete competition problemsthere were 72 actions in particular uhfrom the executive orderbut they ranged across the board fromnon-compete agreements to unjustifiedoccupational licensing requirements toprescription drugs internet billsairline tickets device repairs personalbanking Meat Processingand it’s set forth the ambitious targetsfor our agencies and they have been hardat work over the last year and as aresult things are changing uh they arechanging on the groundlet me just give you a couple examplesthe FDA is now changing regulations sothat hearing aids for modern to mildhearing loss can be sold over thecounterand that Maps there’s almost 50 millionAmericans who have uh hearing loss whosuffer from hearing loss andby allowing over-the-counter sales byremoving uh the barrier of having to seea physician we spur Innovation wedramatically reduce costs and we alsojust make life a little easier for a lotof Americansthe agricultural Department today is forthe first time in decades issuing a newsuite of rules under the Packers andStockyards Actand finally including game changing uhreforms to unfair Contracting systems uhfor poultry Farmers for exampleuh and just like we last week I wouldnoteum it did not get a lot of attention uhalthough maybe in some of these in fromyou and some of your circles it did butthe patented trademark office in FDAannounced plans to scrutinize drug pathsthat are driving up prices incrediblyimportant work that is advancing underthe auspices of our executive orderum I would note importantly as we lookacross these actions they’re not justabout opening up markets to promotecompetition they’re also about lookinginward because government regulation canoften itself get in the way ofinnovation and entry and indeedsometimes powerful incumbents haveenlisted government to entrenchthemselves so we are working to liftregulatory barriers and encourageChallengers to enter markets and competeuh we are proud in this context that thevast majority of those actions we’retaking have attracted bipartisan supportuh they are also spurring the privatesector as States and local governmentsto actum I would note that after PresidentBiden’s executive order endorsed a rightto repair for example uh both apple andMicrosoft announced that they wouldallow people to fix their own devicesum and uh and just recently New Yorkpassed the nation’s first Fair Repairlaw as wellso that’s the first big thing theexecutive order did the second is thatthe order called on the traditionalantitrust agencies the Department ofJustice and the FTCto fully and vigorously enforce ourAnti-Trustthe President also nominated JonathanCantor to head the doj Anti-TrustDivision and Lena Khan to lead the FTCuh both were confirmed with bipartisansupport in the Senate and they are nowably leading those effortstheir work requires developing sensibleFrameworks pursuing cases zealously anddoing so in a challenging legalenvironmentit requires thinking forward to newIndustries and new technologiesincluding the challenges posed by therise of dominant internet platformsand it requires resources to rebuildcapabilityduring just the last decade our economythe size of our economy increased bynearly halfthe annual number of completed mergersand Acquisitions doubled and totalAppropriations for the doj any trustDivision and the FTC have been flat inreal terms they have decreasedand keep in mind these agencies theircore missionis to bring complex cases against someof the best Resources company resourcecompanies in the worldso even under these constraints ourantitrust enforcement agencies haveachieved importance and I would noteoften under-reported uh vehiclevictories over the past yearjust for example the FTC worked with thePentagon to challenge a vertical mergerand keep the largest defense contractorfrom acquiring a major a major missilecomponent producer and likely savingtaxpayers billions of dollars into theprocess the Department of Justiceblocked a 30 billion merger between twoof the world’s largest Insurance Brokersthat would have raised prices for uhconsumersbut even as they made the progress it isunacceptable and fundamentallyunworkable for these agencies resourcesto lag so far behind the growth of theeconomy that they’re charged withprotectingit’s why we have called for boostingfunding for those agencies it’s whywe’re supporting the passage of themerger filing fee modernization act andwe hope and expect Congress to movequickly uh to deliver these enhancedresourcesthe third big piece that the executiveorder accomplished was to prioritizestructural change in our competitionpolicy and it did so principally bycreating the White House competitionCouncilum in that Council which I chairincludes 17 federal agencies theirleaders meet with the president twice ayearand that body is charged withinstitutionalizing competition ourcompetition policy as part of ouroverall economic policyum and this structural element may soundlike a Arcane government minutiaum why is a council exciting but I wantto just harp on this for a secondbecause I think it’s actually profoundlyimportant to turning that aircraftcarrier aroundbecause at core what we need to have aviable competition policy is capacitycreativity and coordination across thefederal governmentand I do want to take a moment just tothank the 17 leaders cabinet secretariesthe Attorney General the hoodie FTCum the head of the uh the FMC the uh Iwill go through all of them or we’ll behere a long time but for theirleadership uh and buy-in in Decemberbecause this structure actually marks afundamental Innovation by PresidentBiden something that has actually neverbeen done before in history which putsagencies working together to leverageall legally available tools to promotecompetitionand that means not only new morecoordination but a newfound ability tosurvey the entire economic landscape andassess how competition policy intersectswith other areas like trade policy andSupply chainsone year in I can report that thatcollaboration from this competitioncouncil is breaking new groundto take one example our justicedepartment and agricultural departmentsare todayworking together through a mechanismcalled farmer fairness.gov that’s awebsite farmerfairness.govwhich actually provides a single placeto report suspected violation legalviolations uh in agricultural marketsand this is in one sense a website aOne-Stop shop for campaign complaintsbut in the more fundamental sense it’san entire innovation in an approach toany trust enforcementbecause you now have two departmentsthat are reviewing every complainttogether they’re assessing how to bestdeploy both of their sets of legalauthorities in this context and toleverage their relevant expertises and Iwill say as an aside this is due tosecretary vilsack attorney generalGarland’s leadership but both itrecognized there’s also a cultural issuethat’d be those who are the most capablein working at this Department of Justiceand the Department of Agriculture don’tnaturally partner together don’tnaturally share ideas or identify wheretheir relative strengths areand that is just one examplethe com the council also particularlyimportant for my position in the workthat we do to coordinate economic policyfor the whole Administrationhas helped to set priorities in areas ofparticular economic salience for thenationocean shipping is one examplethe competition and performance issuesin Ocean shipping have had profoundspillover to our economy coming out ofthe pandemic with fundamental supply andsupply chain constraintswe have a highly concentrated industrydominated by three Alliance alliancesand during the pandemic the price ofshipping and container from Asia to theUnited States Rose more than tenfoldand we are proud uh that through thework of the council prioritizing it havethe president put focus on this Congressanswered the president’s calllegislation in the ocean shipping ReformAct which is the most significant reformof these rules in decadeswe’re also setting this prioritiesbroadly across the council from openingup labor markets to fighting misleadingpricingand another key area uh that is and willwill be important is promotingcompetition in the tech sector to givesmall businesses and startups a betterchance to compete on a Level PlayingFieldand I want to reinforce theadministration’s call for Congress topass bipartisan Tech antitrustlegislationand finally the competition council ishelping embed competition thinking intoagency’s operations at the end of thedaythe promotion of competition policy isabout people but humans who do the workand uh we are pushing New Frontiers inthat respect we just the Department ofTransportation issued new rules to makeour electric vehicle charging networksopen and interoperable this was a placeof real risk that we set rules thatactually could privilege incumbents andlock out new entrants from a new andEmerging Market electric vehicles thecompetition council’s work allowed us towork across agencies and get that rightat least in the first step we’re goingto have to keep getting itso across all of these areas we’ve madea lot of progressuh but before I look forward on some ofthe priorities going forward I do wantto clarify a couple of things that wehaven’t been doingthe first is we have none and we willnot adopt a blanket policy that big isbador that there’s a one-size-fits-allapproach to antitrust or competitionpolicy that’s not in uh executive order14036 it’s not embedded in any of ourworkwe do take the view that marketstructure matters that we need to beconcerned about highly concentratedmarkets and that’s particularly true inan environment where our antitrustagencies have been under resourced andin some cases undercut for decadesbut that is very different than fightingbigness for bigness’s sakethe second thing is we don’t seecompetition as the singular cure forinflation nor do we see it as thedriving Clause of the global inflationuh that we are dealing with todayand at the same time it is easier forfirms to maintain higher prices in amarket with just a few Rivalsso as we look forward promotingcompetition is one important tool notthe only one but one important tool forhow we can actually lower pricepressures in the economy across time andgenerate the kind of stable growth withmore productivity and higher wage growthfor the long termthe last thing I would say is we lookahead is that bolstering competition isparticularly powerful in the currenteconomic moment because of its role inpromoting economic resiliencewe know that a market with morecompetitors is usually better equippedto handle disruptionsand to deliver businesses and consumerswhat they needand we have seen this in profound andprofoundly shocking ways over the courseof the last two yearsjust a year ago I was in the White Housedealing with a Cyber attack that hit thecountry’s second largest Meat ProcessingCompanythat company had to send production atits plants and they processed onequarter of America’s beef one-fifth ofits pork setting Ripple uh ripplesthrough the marketmore recently with infant formula we’veseen the closure of a single plant ownedby a company that controls almost halfof the market create a ripple effectcascading effect in Nationwide shortageour supply chains which has now becomesynonymous with economic challenges thatwe faceare in many waysbrittle and failed the test of apandemic supply shop in the economy andin many cases when we diagnose statusissues and prescribe what we need to dogoing forward competition ends up beingat the center of them because byaddressing underlying such structureproblems of competition we make oursupply chains more resilient morecapable of dealing with the shocks thatcomeso in the coming months what you willsee from this Administration isdelivering on more of the executiveorder’s commitmentsuh you can expect new rules to provideAirline Travelers and Broadbandcustomers upfront information tocomparison shop uh you will see thetreasury Department collaborating withthe uh the Consumer Financial ProtectionBureau on fintech issuesyou will also see us continuing toinstitutionalize competition work atCostcoand I would say uh I will use thisopportunity to do a a call for talent aswell this does require talented peoplecommitted uh to the workand for all of the policy experts andeconomists and litigators out thereplease now is the time to considerPublic Service uh we need you yourcountry needs you it’s a historic momentuh in this next phase we’re going tohave some more to say specifically onsome opportunities on that front uh whenwe have the competition council with thepresident but please consider helping usturn this ship aroundum so I just want to close and eager toget into the conversation your questionsbut say that as challenging as theeffort is to move this aircraft carrierAmerica has fully recalibrated itscompetitive recalibrated itscompetitiveness beforeit has instituted durable and structuralchangeit happens at the turn of the 20thcenturyand today we are at another inflectionpointum and we know that Innovation andopenness are part of America’s economicDNA uh this is the nation that’s LEDtechnical technological revolutionsacross Industries for two centuries it’srepeatedly transformed our globaleconomy for the betterand in a in a moment today a profoundglobal economic challengesthe United States is better positionedas a result of President Biden’seconomic strategyand the competition efforts we’ve takento date to confront the globalchallenges we face then almost any othercountry in the worldand we intend to bring this competitionwork forward in that same spiritwe are taking on Decades of growingMarket power and corporate concentrationthat won’t be reversed overnightbut we can start to see how that worksuh when you start to turn the shiparound we can start to see how itactually serves America’s economicdynamism it helps American families atthis particularly challenging moment inour economic history which is why weintend to double down on these effortsin the years ahead so thank you thankyou for listening your engagement and Iam excited to get into some questionsthank you thank you so muchwork outI’ll introduce uh Cecilia Kong she is anaward-winning reporter for the New YorkTimes covering Tech and regulation witha long story journalism history thatincludes the Washington Post uh the uhthe San Jose Mercury News Dow Jones andit’s also we always have to promotebooks uh around here is the co-authoralong with Sheriff Frankel of an uglytruth inside Facebook’s battle forDomination talk about competitionum uh Cecilia and Brian will be inconversationum for about 20 minutes or so and thenin the last 10 minutes please beprepared because we will take yourquestions okay thank you over to youthank you so much thank you so muchfor being here and for your speech solet’s let’s talk start with a numberthat everybody’s talking about aroundtown 9.1inflationso the Administration has been prettypushing pretty hard at competitionpolicy and supply chain asum as ways to solve inflation and wagesum but prices keep Rising well beyondprojections and so I guess the firstquestion is why hasn’t the White Housebeen more effective when it comes toinflation why does the administrationkeep underestimating if you willinflationso I think the first place we need tostart is in recognizing thatinflation today is a decidedly Globalproblemum inflation the average inflation rateacross the oecd is uh over nine percentuh inflation in the UK is 9.1 inflationin the Euro area of this uh in the highdaysand uh I want to be very clear thatthat’s uh of no Comfort uh to anAmerican family that is uh going to thegrocery store or filling up their uh gaspump uh that this is a a global problemuh and a global challenge but it isimportant in understanding how we goabout uh addressing it uh and I thinkthat uh what the this uh this presidentin this Administration are doingis recognizing that number onebecause of the progress that we havemade as an economy over the course ofthe last 18 monthswe are objectively better positioned toactually prioritize lowering prices asthe principal economic objective that wehave today than almost any other countrythe strength of our labor marketrecovery has uh has been historicum we have uh we just you know last weekuh got a jobs report that the academycreated 372 000 jobs uh in in June andthey sh that that labor market recoveryhas helped to contribute to an outcomewhere households balance sheets are at ahistorically strong levelum credit card delinquencies uh mortgagedelinquencies at uh historic close thoseall give us the ability to Now train ourfocus and say we need to do everythingthat we can responsibly can to bring uhprices down but in a way that doesn’tgive up all of the economic gains thatwe have made uh and on that front uh thepresident’s been very clearhe has a very clear approach to how uhto bring inflation down obviously theFederal Reserve plays a a primary rolein that and he’s done something that uhthat no modern president has done whichhas made very clear that he’s going torespect the independence of thatinstitution and that that’s important uhthat that that is going to give the fedthe space that it needs uh to do what heneeds to do but that he is also focusedon everything that he can practically doto try to bring uh to bring make thingsmore affordable for typical families andthat’s where some of this work uh comesin in ways that I think are veryimportant in practical ways and so youknow we’re talking talk about uh uh theabout work about uh Supply chains youknow I would say if you actually look atwhat’s happened with respect to fluidityat our courts uh you have seen dramaticprogress over the course of the lastseveral months because we’ve beenworking with business and labor anotheruh uh stakeholders to try to improvewhat were real supply chain involvedbut I also think it’s an opportunity forus to step back and say what were thethe significant vulnerabilities in oureconomy coming into this crisis rightthat we shut we we had a convulsivesupply crisis that shut our economy downand then turned our economy back throughwaves of the of the pendant and we’velearned that many of our criticalindustries were uh were were not capableof going through that without creatingprofound uh mismatches in in supply anddemand that have exacerbated priceproblems that we face whether that’s insemiconductors or whether that’s in uhum in uh in in in basic uh Commoditiesuh for uh for durable goodsand so even as we do everything we canin the immediate term we have to thinkabout the longer term reforms that willkeep us from uh being that vulnerablegoing forward sure and that’s wherecompetition policy fits well thank youand a lot of your talk was about turningaround that that air traffic carrierwhich which I will get to but what canyou tell me I think after the last CPIreport I think I saw you um on aninterview on TV talking about theurgency of Congress to pass legislationum just for Semiconductor manufacturingso that in your mind might be animmediate effect I mean I’m talkingabout Immediate Solutions for the familywho’s saying I’m tired of paying 70bucks for my gas tank to fill you knowand the price of my my bill at thegrocery store what are some of theimmediate things you talked aboutsemiconductorsum publicly what are some immediateeffective levers in front of you surewell the first thing that I would say isthat for that uh family that’s uh thatis uh is thinking about uh gas at thepump yeah that uh one of the things thathas happened is over the last 30 daysthe the price of gas has fallen everyday it’s about down to about 45 cents uhsince it peaked in mid-june uh that’swasn’t fully reflected in the CPI datafor June that came out yesterday and sothat that data is inherently backwardlooking but the Here and Now forfamilies that are out there is thatgases the price of gas is falling at thepump uh it’s still too hot but it’scoming down and certainly if you look atuh yeah the oil price uh and you look atwholesale prices for gas we shouldexpect that to continue uh to come downso if this month we continue to see ahistoric number of days where the priceof gas at the pump is falling that willprovide some immediate uh immediaterelief that’s connected to some of thesteps that we’ve taken which I won’t Iwon’t belabor but that is that is insome ways the most immediate uh uhimpact and it’s happening right now uhbut yes uh I was I spoke about thisyesterday and the president has as wellright now the challenge of inflationincreases the stakes of Congressurgently moving on a couple of frontsone on setting conductors uh we havebeen at this for some time the presidentcalled for bipartisan action on thismore than a year ago we are close weneed to get this done because we needthis is an economic security and anational security imperative we need tohave more resilience in our own abilityto produce and serve the semiconductormarket and it affects everything fromthe Cars we drive to the ConsumerElectronics that are in each of uh ourpockets to everything that is allowingus to uh to live cast right now butnumber two Congress has in front of itthe opportunity to bring down some ofthe kind of most persistent everydaycosts that families face prescriptiondrug costsutility billsthese are things that there islegislation that has gone through uh nowhas passed the house uh is in the SenateThere’s an opportunity to get somethingdone uh on on those as well and if we dowe can help that fiscal policy canprovide a supportive and accommodativeuh role as monetary policy is operatinguh to try to normalize prices great wellokay so we’re here to talk about yourcompetition agenda one year in so EO1436 thank you for for giving me thenumber just nowumum one of your underlying messages inyour speech was about structural changeturning around the aircraft carrierum this will require patience and yourcompetition agenda is fraudcomprehensive and it will not showimmediate effects and rewards in somecasesare you asking the American people to bepatient to see how the results of thisagenda will pan out is that is it goingto require patience and given theurgency of inflation storing inflationright now and tanking markets and justthe way that the economy is and thereare some fright spots as you mentioneddo you look back and think perhaps therecould have been a narrower approachso two things are you asking Americansto be patientand a narrow approachso um to the first oneuh no I don’t think we’re askingAmericans to be patient we’redemonstrating uh what it looks like toact with urgency but also at the scaleof the challenge that we face so part ofthe reason why the president acted soearly in his administration and to setout by executive order a broad range of72 actions was precisely to demonstratethat we can make immediate progress onthings that really matter to people’slives even as we go deeper and recognizethat longer term change is actuallygoing to take or structural change isactually going to take longer as well souh so we we have operated from The Viewthat we’re not going to wait uh on thoseareas where action is urgently neededand possible as I mentioned uh you takesomething like right to repair thepresident went on an executive order andsaid that this is the position of thegovernment that we believe there shouldbe a right to repair and within monthsApple went out and said that now you youcan repair your iPhone at a non-applelocation you want to talk aboutsomething that actually has a practicalimpact on on people’s lives and lookingat you know maybe one-fifth of the ofthe crowd is actively holding theiriPhone in their uh in their in theirhand uh right uh right now uh and sothat that is very you know immediatepractical impact uh hearing aids overthe counter is just something that uhcertainlyum uh in my family multiple people whohave uh mouth hearing loss and otherones actually you know they can see andfeel in their uh in their lives and atthe same time a recognition that part ofthe challenge of why we’ve seenincreased uh uh concentration inIndustries is because we haven’tvigorously enforced antitrust laws andthat doing so does require time and itdoes requireum it does require resources and it doesrequire a deliberate strategy to bringcases in a way that is thoughtful and sowe have tried to uh not ask for patiencebut demonstrate what it looks like toact with urgency uh and with uh withscale to your question about could youhave been been more focused you know Ilook I think that part of the benefit ofoperating broadlyis that we have brought out agencyaction and enthusiasm that wouldn’t youwouldn’t have seen otherwise let me giveyou a very concrete examplewe have around the table now not onlythe big antitrust enforcement agencieslike the Department of Justice and uh uhum and uh the FTC but also smaller oneslike the STD right and at a moment rightnow in our economy when we have realchallenges around Supply chains andcommon carriers we have found thatRailways uh ports ocean shipping arecrucially important to actually breakingbottlenecks that help people right nowand so when the head of the STDrecognized we had real problems withRail and wanted to go to Congress toraise the profile of that being able tohave a Crossing around the table uh thethe the Secretary of Transportation andsay can we operate on these thingstogether and can we try to bring a morepractical solution to solve this problemright now it’s that scope that actuallygives us the ability to identifyproblems that matter in the economyright now but that you might nototherwise see if you’re just looking atit through a narrower yeah and along thelines of enforcement of the agency sothe two top antitrust enforcers at theFTC and the doj have now been in placeum for some months now and they wereboth brought they both came in withreputations for their ideas as well astheir on the ground as lawyers umfightingum against some of the big techcompanies and they brought some theoriessome very novel theories about Amazonand Google for example we have not seenthis Administration bring a big Techenforcement monopolization case yet isthis something that you believe thatthis Administration should do and isthis something because that’sexpectation that liena Khan and JonathanCanton would come and take on the bigtech companiesso I uh the one thing I won’t do is Iwon’t speak prospectively to specific uhum cases uh because uh we leave to theenforcement agencies uh to uh toundertake specific enforcement actionswhat I will say is that if you look goback to the president’s executive orderand it underscored the need to havevigorous enforcements of our antitruststatutes including to focus on new andemerging challenges in our economy yesof which uh the the dominant position ofInternet platforms was one of thosechallenges uh that we needed to trainour focus on and so certainly uh youknow I think you haveum you have seen action consistent withthat out of this Administration but I’mgoing to leave to uh the enforcementagencies any prospective questions aboutuh enforcement actions that said timefeels like it’s running out pace is sortof an important thing right now we havemidterm elections coming at the end ofthe year a couple more years in thisAdministration if if it’s you know intune us will have the next in 2024 whatare your what can you accomplish in theremainder of this Administration thatyou feel like is really important andwill show that you’ve executed on thisagendawell it’s funny becauseum most of the time what we get andimplicit in in inone of your prior questions was that thescale and the pace of what we’ve triedto get done is is too is is too massivepeople often say 72 you know uh umactions right out of the gate you knoware you doing too much too uh too fastuh but I think that uh part of theanother part of why the motivationbehind the executive order and actuallybeing behind trying to prescribe veryearly on in the administration specificactions whether they are agency actionsrulemakings uh regulatory changesum uh directives that would thensubsequently lead to enforcement actionsfor doing it early on in theadministration was precisely out of therecognition that these things do taketime and so 18 months into anAdministration a year into the uh theexecutive order we actually findourselves very well placed to stillrelatively early on less than halfwaythrough the first term of a presidencyuh to actually Advance this agenda inways that build uh it into theinstitutional fabric of how theexecutive branch operates and so uhWe’ve uh our agencies have initiatedum the rulemaking necessary to actuallymake good on those actions uh in caseswhere that rulemaking takes multipleyears we are well on our way and intothat and so actually I I actually thinkit’s the opposite I think that byidentifying this as a priority earlyand galvanizing agencies to try to beambitious about what needs to get doneearly on in a in inthe first termthat we are well positioned to bring alot of that to uh fruition and you knowalong the lines of the agencies of therule making talk about please what yourhow you’re thinking about the SupremeCourt’s recent decision onadministrative law related to thatenvironmental case in West Virginia andhow that applies to your agenda and theagencies basically enacting and creatingtheir own rules yeahwell look I would sayumwe in in some place in some in some areaspace a uh challenging legal environmentyeah I would say it’s an aside that thatum we were uh disappointed by thatdecision uh the president spoke directlyuh to it and his concerns uh with uh uhwith with with that decision but I thinkwe knew that we were facing thatchallenging environment before TheSupreme Court uh ruled uh last month uhand I think that uh we have given a lotof thought to making sure that where weare encouraging agencies to undertakerulemaking uh that it is well developedwith a clear Theory and it’s um based onthe statutory predicate and the otherthing that I would say that isinteresting in this area is that we arealso identifying an enormous number ofareas where there is bipartisan appetitein Congress to actually move legislationto strengthen or augment authorities uhwhere we have determined that weactually need uh we we need help fromCongress so the ocean shipping ReformAct is a good example a practicalexample of Congress movie very quicklyuh to the president’s call to say we arewe don’t have the authority that we needto actually bring oversight andaccountability to these nine oceanshipping companies who are operating ina kind of you know a bit of anAnti-Trust loopholeum uh but I I could you know lots ofother areas where there’s really durableorganic bipartisan appetites to try toaugment or improve those authoritieswhere it turns out that you know what weneed is uh is is Congress as well yeahand at the same time every proposed ruleof the FTC for exampleelicits immediate response from thecorporate sector in terms of lawsuitsand so this is going to be long andyears fought out I imagine again to thepoint of the turning aroundyou know and that’s look the process ofthe process of rule making and then umand then challenge you know or fromproposed to taking comments andfinalizing the challenges is inherentlydoesn’t you know inherently have uh havethat pace into it but I guess I I wouldI would say two things one isthat’s why it is important to startearly and we have done that uh and we’rekeeping that pace up uh and two thatthis is not a um we’re not operating ina uh in a static environment as well andso we I’ve seen I mentioned uh uh rightto repair but we’ve seen in other areasas well that agency action or uhstatement of administration policyencourages private sector actors tooperate uh and uh and open up uh avenuesfor more competition uh even an absenceof of a finalizing rule that’s somethingthat we’re we’re we welcome uh and weand we’re we’re doing a lot ofEngagement uh with uh with firms tounderstand where are those places whereactually by laying out a framework uh ortaking some other action we might beable to you know elicit uh elicit apositive output and what I’m going topush a little bit more on what needs inyour mind what your priorities are forthe last for the next two years or sowhat absolutely must be done for thisyour agenda to be successful in yourmind is it legislationum bipartisan Tech legislation orantitrust legislation much has beenproposed there is a question of uswhetherum leadership is going to bringum a bill by included to publisher andChuck Grassley to the floor is thatsomething the president let me askspecifically is that something thepresident of the White House will askum leader Schumer to do to bring thatlegislationwell let me I I will I’ll answer thatquestion in the context of the thepriorities of what we really think needsto get done I think number oneum we do uh we uh we we do want and needto see Congress uh act in some of thesepriority areasum uh Tech antitrust uh legislation isone of them there’s been real seriousbipartisan progress in both uh Chambersuh of Congressum we have been supportive of that anduh we would like to see that uh likewiseon the issue of privacy uh the presidenthas uh long viewed uhthe process needing to update andstrengthen uh privacy regulationsparticularly when it comes to uhchildren uh but he has spoken to thatand we would like to see uh movement andprogress on that this Congress both ofthose bills look uh we would like to seeit happen as soon as we can get as aswell you ask Schumer well you know weare we’re we’re engaged with theleadership with uh they’ll beaters onthose processes Senator Klobuchar uhleader Grassleyum or chairman Grassleyum and uh we’re going to continue uhwe’re gonna we’re gonna uh we’re gonnacontinue to do thatum but I would say in terms of what whatreally needs to happenum we need to see progress on that frontuh we need to make good on thecommitment to what it means to actuallyvigorously enforce Anti-Trust laws uhand we’re on the way on that but that’sgoing to take time uh we need ouragencies to follow through on uhrulemakings and other changes that willactually make things easier for theAmerican people in concrete uh andtangible ways but the last thing that Iwould say is we also need to step backand realize that this crisis that oureconomy has been throughuh should require us to actually thinkabout the ways in which competitionpolicy can help us solve making oureconomy more resilient going forward andI think that there’s opportunity There’sreal opportunity there but it’s alsoit’ll be a missed opportunity if wedon’t do so okay greatum okay so what are your jobs your jobreleased according Economic Policyacross the executive branch and thatmeans what you’re just a big job a lotjust happening on the federal governmentbut right now a lot of the activitiesshipped into the states and so muchlegislation because in lieu actuallythat of action in in Congressparticularly in particular what is yourview on how that’s how that’s panningout in the States this Patchwork of lawsthat are that are emerging on antitrustas well as other issues like especiallythe tech sector like privacy and speechrelated legislation yeah well look Imean it’s uh it operates on three levelsright we’re seeing that and we’re alsoseeing internationally uh the uh the uhEuropeans for example moving out on uhon Frameworks as well that will haveprofound impacts on our companies andand the economy as well so I think thatit uh it’s that’s a in one sense that isa national and expected uh outcome ofthe of the system that we operate in uhbut I think in another sense it’s areminder that we need to be moving andleading at the federal level uh andthat’s true the executive branch is trueof Congress as well that um that thebest outcome is for us to set clear uhgoals um debate them but then lead uhand so uh so I think it’s uh it’s a it’sa reminder of that as wellum this is a question my one of mycolleagues wanted me to ask you theadministration is trying to Galvanizethe global price cap on Russian oilahead of Europe’s import band takingeffect at the end of the year but manyof American Allies are worried it won’twork if the price cap falls apart whatis the backup plan to avert another oilshock and what would what would theadministration do if Putin retaliated bycutting off natural gas supplies to theWest yeah well umwe uh we certainly are always planningfor contingencies but what I will say isthat we have already made enormousprogress on this processfrom uh there was skepticism before thepresident went to the G7 uh that the G7could get together on this idea they didand they have directed theirum their Finance ministers and treasuryour treasury secretary leading thiseffort uh to work expeditiously and sothat’s what we’re doing we’re making alot of progress secretary Yellen is inAsia right now as we speak and uh one ofthe central things that she’s engagingwith Alice and partners in the region onis how to effectively execute and getdown to the details but I just umbecause it may not be familiar foreverybody theum the the the price cap mechanismagainst an European and UK ban oninsurance is a very is is is technicalin the specifics but I just want to liftup and and clearly articulate the policygoal which I am confident that we willworking with us and partners achievewhich is which has been our goal for uhthroughout this uh uh process uh sincePutin’s invasion of Ukraine which is tomaintain Global Supply of oilto mitigate the impact on global oilmarkets and on U.S consumers andconsumers and other of our Alliedcountries while maximizing the economicpain on Vladimir Putin and every one ofour actions including this most recentwork around price cap is is animated bythat goal okayand we I think are ready for questionsfrom the audience it also sounds likedirector D’s July CPI might reflect someof the things that you talked aboutearlier so we shall see a question inthe audiencecan you identify yourself please I’mMike Nelson of the Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace I had the chanceto work in the Clinton Administration onuh interagency internet policy so Iappreciate what you’re doing and I knowjust how hard it is but I wanted to looka little bit at the at the state leveland particularly look at confuseopolythis is a term that Dilbert invented andrefers to everything from cell phoneplans to medical health insurance tocable plans things that are servicesthat are just so confusing the customeris locked in is there any way to giveconsumers more transparency moreportability so that they’re notthrowing their hands up and saying Ican’t choose I can’t judge which plan isbetter than the other and this is more astate effort than a national leveleffort but I’d be interested if you haveany thoughts on this yeah yeahum I like that I’m gonna I’m gonnaborrow that term from Dilbert uh forsure so uhlook I think um I think that I think theanswer is yes there’s more that can bedone but I think that we have to come atit from a couple of different anglesum one is in some cases theum the confusion itself it reflects aum uh an entrenchment or an incumbencyadvantage where uh they’re just the lackof the fundamental lack of competitionallows for it feels to the consumer likeit’s uh it’s complicated but in fact thecomplexity is a function of the factthat there just isn’t any competition atall rightum so you know if you’re you youmentioned you know cable bills and ifyou’re moving into an apartment and youhave only one choice of a cable bill andit’s complicated but it’s also expensiveum you may not even recognize thatthat’s because there was an arrangementbetween the internet service providerand the and the landlord to lock out anyother competitor that might figure out away to make it simpler and induce you tochoose that option right so some of thatis identifying where there actually maybeum a fundamental competition issue andthe second is where you know where afocusing on transparency and simplicityof information as a uh more of animplicit competition issue as opposed toa more you know explicit barrier andthere we are doing a lot of work on thatthe Department of Transportation isdoing that in the context of uh of of ofAirlines and other uh otherTransportation uh sectors uh the FTC islooking that at that in some cases wherewe have uh Federal Authority yeah Ithink what we have found one of thethings that we have found is thatum you’ve got to be very focused on sortof Behavioral economics and what is thewhat is a fair amount of information uhbut you know this is one of the lessonsI served in the umduring the financial crisis during thedepths of a housing crisis which was inpart a function of the fact that therewas uh incredible complexity uh in howpeople got themselves into mortgages andthen it took years to unwind but we’vealso learned a lot that simple clearinformation uh provided in a way that aconsumer can actually understand isincredibly powerful it’s an incrediblypowerful disciplining mechanism uh soyes I think big picture there’s a lotthat can be done on that uh frontobviously when you get into the specificsome of it is very much at the statelevel but it’s something that’s high onour agendaright there’s other two questions herethanksuh thanks Brian uh Jeff Weiss I rundistributed Sun so I’m a solar developerand I reduce greenhouse gas emissionsand I vaguely think that among theadministration’s goals in addition tocompetition is to reduce greenhouse gasemissions and improve the climate so mycompetition question really goes to thestructure of the marketsum so I think our our mutual friendRichard Kaufman would say that thecapital markets are the greatestequalizer and that’s how we’re going toinvest the next trillion dollars and yetyou’ve mentioned Estates which arereally important so in the energymarkets State regulation is actuallyin most in many states monopolistic andin some states oligopolistic and almostnever competitive what Richard did inNew York was to unlock pricing to apretty good extent through Vaderum how can the administration help tounlock a State regulation so that we canhave open competition for rates and tounleash the capital markets to investthe next trillion dollars to improveboth climate and reduce pricesuh well you’re absolutely right nowthere’s no uhthere’s no higher priority that we thatwe have thanum uh try to accelerate the transitionto clean energy and at core that isgoing to be unlocked by uh by directingmassive uh quantities of capitaluh and so uh so I think that you knowin energy markets and and particularlyelectricity markets are one of the mostcomplicated and highly regulated uh andso you know the question of how to dothat is there isn’t I think aone-size-fits-all uh answer there but Ido think that it goes to you know one ofthe things that we are um thinking aboutat the federal level in terms of what wecan actually do because both thequestions sort ofget at how can you actually affect Stateuh action is we have more opportunity toactually use tools at the at the federallevel toyou know induce or incentivize uh changeeven in places where Federal Authoritydoesn’t actually preempt uh uh stateregulatory Authority which is the casein in energy markets and so we have beenlooking at particularly in thedeployment of the funding that was inthe infrastructure law for example uh ifyou look at the funding there fortransmission uh or you look at thefunding for storage uh the uh we haveopportunities as we engage with statesto encourage uh Behavior by you knowoffering carrots uh uh as well as youknow as well as in in places there aresome places where uh the federalgovernment has uh sticks as well butum you know I think we have that some ofthat is is being more creative uh withthe use of federal Authority than wehave todayI think we do we have afraid this isgoing to have to be the last questionand it needs to be a short one sorrythank you okay so Harold felt with thepublic knowledge and the first thing youhave to just note with regard to uh MikeNelson’s point there is a federal agencythat addresses that it’s called theFederal Communications Commission itcould do it has done something somecompetition it could do a hell of a lotmore if it actually had its thirdDemocrat so hopefullyum we will get the vote on that soon butI actually wanted to ask you about thequestion of judges because frankly oneof the things that has really undercutantitrust law has been then Democratshave not made a particular priority uhof finding out about Judges and theirattitudes towards antitrust and economiccompetitionum before making appointments whereasRepublicans tended to do that intendedto go in the direction of Franklinundercuttingum antitrust so is this something nowthat the Biden administer situation isfocused on the question of thinkingabout this when making judicialappointments to ask about uh questionsof their economic philosophyparticularly with regard to competitionas well as other questions theadministration may get asked in thepetting process yeah it’s um uh it’s agreat it’s a great Point uh it’s a it’sa fair question we’re actually justtalking about this earlier uh earliertoday the short answer is uh is yes anduh yes it is and uh we uh we could domore of that as well I think we have auh in the president uh and his team andworking with uh leader Schumer and uhand uh Senate leadership have a alreadyan extraordinary record of nominatingand confirming judges uh that arebringing a uh an entirely new diversityof viewpoint uh and uh diversity lifeexperience to the federal bench andwe’re going to continue to do that andwe are going to continue to prioritizedoing that and I think that we can uheven more so than we have todayum focus on this set of questionsbecause it builds out you know it is animportant uh element uh of this and goesto some of the questions we were talkingabout that at the end of the dayum the interplay betweenuh regulatory measures and fundamentallythe courts is where we’re gonna you knowwhere we’re going to operate a bigprogressokay well that’s all the time we have Ijust want to thank um Cecilia Kong uhBrian Dees thank you so much and thankyou all for your attention and uh we’llsee you next time thank you very muchforeign[Music]
In July 2021, President Biden formed the White House Competition Council, establishing a body to combat domestic corporate consolidation and coordinate antitrust enforcement actions. One year later, what progress has been made, and how will it move forward?
Speakers
Brian Deese
Director of the White House National Economic Council
Brian Deese serves as the Director of the White House National Economic Council, advising President Biden on domestic and international economic policy and coordinating the economic agenda of the Biden‐Harris Administration. A former Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama who was instrumental both in engineering the rescue of the U.S. auto industry and in negotiating the landmark Paris Climate Agreement, Deese is a crisis‐tested advisor with broad experience in accelerating economic prosperity, empowering working Americans, and harnessing the economic opportunities that come from building a clean energy economy and combating the climate crisis. Prior to his current role, Deese was Global Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, where worked to drive greater focus on climate and sustainability risk in investment portfolios and create investment strategies to help accelerate the low‐carbon transition. During the Obama‐Biden Administration, Deese served as Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Deese received his bachelor of arts from Middlebury College, and his JD from Yale Law School.
Cecilia Kang
The New York Times
Cecilia Kang covers technology and regulation and joined The New York Times in 2015. She is a co-author, along with Sheera Frenkel of The Times, of “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination.” Previously she was the senior technology correspondent for The Washington Post and was a staff writer at The San Jose Mercury News and Dow Jones. She is a 2018 recipient of the George Polk and Gerald Loeb Awards along with her Times colleagues for coverage of Facebook.
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