Antitrust Enforcement is About Affordability

I am not breaking news when I say that America is in the clutches of an affordability crisis. Families across the nation are feeling strangled by the cost of living—of housing, healthcare, childcare, gas, and groceries. According to the Urban Institute, nearly half of American families aren’t able to cover essential expenses to live securely.

As California Attorney General, I’ve made combating the affordability crisis one of California DOJ’s top priorities. As of late, much of that work has included antitrust enforcement.

Before your eyes glaze over and you scroll away, hear me out: Antitrust enforcement is about affordability.

When giant corporations monopolize markets, collude to fix prices, or merge to knock out competition, it hurts our economy and results in consumers paying higher prices for fewer options. When we go after corporations that violate antitrust laws, we are fighting for you—your budget, your bills, your pocketbook.

This is about how much you pay for food, streaming services, satellite TV, cable, tickets to live shows, and clothing. It’s about being able to afford your life. It’s about being able to start your own business and have it succeed or fail based on the quality of what you offer—not based on a giant corporation that controls the market and squashes you before you can get off the ground. It’s about ensuring that the deeply American values of innovation, competition, and a free market win out. It’s about protecting businesses that follow the law and working families who deserve to pay fair prices.

We’ve seen throughout history that consolidation in markets at the center of American economic life doesn’t serve our economy, consumers, or competition well. In fact, market consolidation has proven to lead to increased unaffordability, a loss of good-paying job opportunities, and fewer choices for consumers.

If you need proof that antitrust enforcement works, just look at California. California is the fourth largest economy in the world AND we have some of the strongest antitrust and consumer protection laws on the books. That’s no accident.

Antitrust enforcement is good for the economy, consumers, and businesses that play by the rules.

Knowing all of this, it probably comes as no surprise that, historically, antitrust enforcement has been apolitical. Sadly, that’s becoming a distant memory.

More and more, President Trump and his Administration seem to have abandoned the fight for a free and fair market and abdicated their role to hold corporations accountable to the law. They are overruling the career staff and their own hand-picked antitrust experts in favor of corporate interests. Since Trump returned to office, he fired the head of the U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division, agreed to a sweetheart deal with Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and greenlit the merger of broadcast titans Nexstar and Tegna.

The Trump Administration has made it abundantly clear that it is more concerned with protecting corporate interests than making life more affordable for Americans.

The American people deserve better.

My fellow Attorneys General and I are stepping up to fill the vacuum the Trump Administration has created.

Take our case against ticketing giant Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster. When this case was originally filed in 2024, it was led by a bipartisan coalition of state Attorneys General and the federal government (under then-President Joe Biden). The states and feds teamed up to stop Americans from being scammed when buying tickets to see their favorite artists perform live. That is until the Trump Administration jumped ship and agreed to a lackluster settlement with Live Nation—a decision that shocked even his pal Kid Rock. Thirty-three blue and red states and Washington D.C. stood together and continued our fight in court, leading to an historic verdict that found Live Nation’s conduct illegal.

Then there’s the unlawful megamerger between Nexstar and Tegna, two of the nation’s largest local broadcast TV groups. If allowed to proceed with integration, the combined company would reach 265 TV stations across 44 states and Washington D.C., covering 80% of American television households. This merger would give one behemoth the power to raise prices for consumers, control and degrade local news and sports coverage, and it would undoubtedly lead to job cuts. It would result in fewer choices for consumers, and fewer journalists keeping a check on powerful institutions and keeping local communities informed. It also happens to be illegal under the Clayton Act, a law that prohibits mergers that substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly.

Despite all of that, President Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly urged the unlawful deal through on social media and in other public comments. My colleagues and I sued and successfully blocked the merger from moving forward while our case proceeds through the court system.

My office is also intervening in the settlement of the $14 billion merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) and Juniper Networks following serious allegations that the Trump Administration approved it because of backroom deals with their buddy lobbyists, over the objections of the career attorneys and their own chosen leader of the Antitrust Division.

Regulators from across the political spectrum have argued that the Trump Administration’s approval of the HPE/Juniper merger is inadequate. U.S. DOJ’s merger settlement failed to address the anticompetitive harms outlined in its own complaint against the merger. Even attorneys appointed by President Trump himself raised red flags; attorneys who were allegedly fired for opposing this merger.

This is about more than one merger. It’s about whether the Administration will continue using its authority to reward allies and political friends, while undermining ordinary Americans, its own staff, and state officials who hold them accountable.

We are also in the midst of making our case in court against Amazon for stifling competition and driving up prices. We originally filed our case in 2022 and this week we released new, damning evidence that paints a clear picture of Amazon’s price fixing scheme and how it’s increasing costs for unsuspecting Americans. We revealed evidence that shows Amazon bullied vendors to hike up the prices of their products sold at other shops or got them to remove the products from other retailers altogether, thereby ensuring Amazon was the cheapest place consumers could find products.

While families struggle to buy necessities, Amazon blatantly worked to ensure that consumers could not find cheaper products out in the marketplace, all the while raking in unlawful profits from Americans who genuinely thought they were getting the best deal. We secured a key win earlier this month when a court rejected Amazon’s effort to convince the court that California’s antitrust laws do not apply to its anticompetitive conduct. We look forward to holding Amazon fully accountable in our trial.

As Attorney General of California, it’s my job to ensure that California continues to be the best place to live, work, raise a family, and start or run a business. Robust antitrust enforcement helps ensure that all Californians and all California businesses can benefit from a vibrant, competitive economy, not just well-connected businesses, wealthy shareholders, and friends of the President. A fair, competitive market creates a level playing field where all businesses have the chance to grow and thrive. Where more businesses can operate and innovate and employ the abundance of talented workers California has to offer.

President Trump and his Administration may have thrown in the towel and may be content to do the bidding of their corporate donors, but I am not.

I will continue to fight monopolies, megamergers, price fixing, and any anticompetitive conduct that violates the law and threatens California’s economy, workers, and your pocketbooks.