Big Tech is back in the congressional hot seat. On Wednesday, the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google will be questioned in a House judiciary antitrust subcommittee hearing.
This is perhaps the most important and high-profile conversation about monopolies since the Microsoft case of the 1990s. If Democrats triumph in the November elections, it could also be a major, multi-decade turning point in US antitrust policy. They want to curb not only Big Tech, but a number of other industries with dominant players — finance and pharmaceuticals — with more regulation.
If that happens, we should thank not only Washington, but state and local officials who have been challenging corporate power in their own backyards for several years. As a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance lays out, they have been “on the front lines of the problems caused by excessive concentration” in America, including food insecurity, power outages and poor broadband coverage. These vulnerabilities have been highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic.