Formation | February 2020 |
---|---|
Executive Director | Sarah Miller |
Website | https://www.economicliberties.us/ |
The American Economic Liberties Project(AELP) is an American non-profit organization that advocates corporate accountability legislation and aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulations. [1]
The AELP was founded in February 2020 and is led by Sarah Miller, a former Department of the Treasury official. [2] The AELP is funded in part by the Omidyar Network which is funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar. [3] It is considered an important organization in the New Brandeis movement, which focuses on modern antitrust efforts. [4]
The organization praised the nominations of Lina Khan to serve on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and of Jonathan Kanter to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. [5] [6]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
TimothyShiou-Ming Wu is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook.
Christine A. Varney is an American antitrust attorney who served as the U.S. assistant attorney general of the Antitrust Division for the Obama Administration and as a Federal Trade commissioner in the Clinton Administration. Since August 2011, Varney has been a partner of the New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where she chairs the antitrust department.
William Evan Kovacic is an American legal scholar who served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2006 to 2011, including as its chairman from 2008 to 2009. He is a member of the Republican Party.
The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit education, research, and advocacy organization. The AAI advocates for more aggressive antitrust enforcement by the federal government.
Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, are the most dominant information technology companies. The term most often refers to the Big Five tech companies in the United States: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. In China, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi (BATX) are the equivalent of the Big Five. Big Tech can also include smaller tech companies with high valuations such as Netflix or non-tech companies with high-tech practices such as the automaker Tesla.
Rohit Chopra is an American consumer advocate who is the third director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and previous member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Prior to this, Chopra served as assistant director of the CFPB and as the agency's first Student Loan Ombudsman, an office created by the Dodd–Frank Act.
Lina M. Khan is a British-born American legal scholar serving as chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2021. While a student at Yale Law School, she became known for her work in antitrust and competition law in the United States after publishing the influential essay "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox". She was nominated by President Joe Biden to the Commission in March 2021, and has served since June 2021 following her confirmation. She is also an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.
Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc. is an ongoing antitrust court case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Facebook parent company Meta. Filed in conjunction with 46 states, the lawsuit alleges that Meta has accumulated monopoly power via anti-competitive mergers, with the suit centering on the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter is an American attorney who is a current commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Slaughter was previously the acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission from January 21, 2021, to June 15, 2021.
The Chamber of Progress is an American trade group that represents technology companies on issues such as antitrust law, content moderation, and self-driving cars. The group describes itself as a progressive advocacy organization, while some have characterized it as an astroturfing corporate front group opposing government regulation and unionization. It was established in 2020 by Adam Kovacevich and is funded by Amazon, Uber, Meta, Google, Apple, Twitter, and other technology companies.
The New Brandeis or neo-Brandeis movement is an antitrust academic and political movement in the United States which argues that excessively centralized private power is dangerous for economical, political and social reasons. Also called hipster antitrust by its detractors, the movement advocates that United States antitrust law seek to improve business market structures that negatively affect market competition, income inequality, consumer rights, unemployment, and wage growth.
Jonathan Seth Kanter is an American antitrust attorney who has served as assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division since November 16, 2021. Prior to this, Kanter worked as an antitrust attorney at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and in private practice.
In the context of U.S. competition law, the consumer welfare standard (CWS) or consumer welfare principle (CWP) is a legal doctrine used to determine the applicability of antitrust enforcement.
Christine Smith Wilson is an American attorney and former government official. A member of the Republican Party, Wilson was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018 to serve on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Wilson resigned from the FTC in 2023.
Dennis Alden Yao is an American academic who served as a member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 1991 to 1994. A member of the Democratic Party, Yao was the first Asian American to serve on the FTC and the third career economist to serve on the body, which has generally been composed of attorneys.
Alvaro Martin Bedoya is an American attorney and government official who has served on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) since 2022.
Executive Order 14036, titled Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy and sometimes referred to as the Executive Order on Competition, is the fifty-first executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden. Signed on July 9, 2021, the order serves to establish a "whole-of-government effort to promote competition in the American economy" by encouraging stronger enforcement of antitrust law.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on January 24, 2023. The suit accuses Google of illegally monopolizing the advertising technology (adtech) market in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The suit is separate from an ongoing DOJ antitrust case launched in 2020 accusing Google of illegally monopolizing the search engine market.
Federal Trade Commission, et al. v. Amazon.com, Inc. is a lawsuit brought against the multinational technology company and online retailer Amazon in 2023. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), joined by the attorneys general of seventeen U.S. states, alleges that Amazon holds and abuses an online retail monopoly.