The state of play in the fight against monopoly power
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of The Balanced Economy Project’s Counterbalance Newsletter. We’re making some changes to our newsletter which we’re excited to share with you.
Welcome to The Counterbalance, a newsletter covering unchecked corporate power and the impact unfair monopolies have on business, politics and markets.
My name is Scott Chipolina, and I have just joined The Balanced Economy Project. I am a former regulator-turned journalist who has worked for The Financial Times, and who has covered tech, markets and the financial sector for over five years.
I have never covered monopolies as monopolies, but over the course of my reporting I have encountered many of the key actors in this space.
During my first week at the FT, I landed a front-page story about Elon Musk’s proposed bid for X (then known as Twitter), interviewed Big Tech chiefs including Sam Altman, and covered the rapidly changing face of organised crime in a digital economy.
I also covered the historic collapse of crypto exchange FTX, which set the nascent digital assets industry back by years and taught me what can happen to a market when a single player backed by opaque political interests is left unchecked.
I suppose you could say I have been “monopoly-adjacent”, and now I am excited to fully dive into this world with all of you. With that said, please enjoy my first edition of the Counterbalance newsletter, which I will be publishing weekly.
The state of play in the fight against monopoly power
Like most journalists, I like to start with the bad news first: the fight against unfair monopolies and unchecked corporate power is being lost.
Last week I travelled to Amsterdam to attend the Global Convening on Monopoly Power, organised by The Center of Research on Multinational Organisations (SOMO). Flanked by lawyers, academics and wider members of civil society, I was able to take stock of our shared political reality, which I try to divide into three compartments below.
First, we are witnessing a multiple front war on rules and regulations: the EU’s Omnibus package, a “growth and deregulation” agenda gaining speed in the UK, and the US government’s Musk-inspired Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have combined to present a triple threat to consumers in favour of powerful corporations.
Secondly, Donald Trump’s return to the White House has opened a fresh chapter of American exceptionalism. Washington, D.C. is now pulling every political lever available, from tariffs to Greenland, in a coordinated effort to exert control over external business and politics.
Just last weekend, US government officials warned companies in Europe to comply with an executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
But the key here is that the White House is not acting alone. For those of us involved in researching monopoly power, it’s crucial to realise the United States has blurred the line between public agencies and private companies like never before.
If the signs weren’t clear enough during Trump’s second inauguration, it has now become obvious: it is no longer accurate to think of American Big Tech as private actors, but as tools for foreign policymaking.
“What’s worrisome here — if I'm an EU policymaker — is the combination of monopoly power and the fact that the US enjoys a monopoly on monopolies,” Charley Cooper, former chief operating officer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, told me over the phone yesterday.
This unprecedented concentration of power undermines not only business and finance, but the democratic foundations of society.
Open Markets Institute executive director Barry Lynn echoed similar sentiments in Amsterdam. “When you’re dealing with these corporations, you’re dealing with arms of the US state.”
Then we consider the global south, the third component of our shared political context. Countries south of the hemisphere are facing their own perils, including the gutting of a competition authority in Mexico. As one fellow attendee said last week, “the global south has its own realities.”
You might ask what we can do about this seemingly never-ending list of challenges. I won’t pretend the answer is simple, but I will share some of my preliminary thoughts, which might also help you — a loyal subscriber — to know what to expect as you read more of The Balanced Economy Project’s work.
If you are in Europe, the chances are you are worrying about dependence on US multinationals. If you are reading this in the UK, you’re likely worried about your competition authority being run by a former Amazon chief, and if I’m reaching you in Mexico, you’ll be hoping that the loss of independence of the previously strong Mexican competition agency (COFECE) doesn’t encourage complacency among companies and leave consumers at the mercy of a few barons who would thrive at their expensive.
Suffice to say, we will fail if we isolate ourselves to problems that end at our national borders. The fight against unfair monopolies and unchecked corporate power is global, and it is through this international lens that I will approach the Counterbalance newsletter.
To paraphrase a slice of wisdom from Matt Stoller, who writes the anti-monopoly SubStack newsletter BIG, learning about monopolies and competition is like knowing a secret language.
It helps you understand why food prices are so high, why the UK’s deregulation agenda is a risk to consumers, why two-thirds of GAMMA lobbying takes place on Capitol Hill, and why opinion writers at the Washington Post can no longer publish articles that Jeff Bezos disagrees with.
I look forward to speaking this language of monopoly power with all of you. I will be back in your inbox next Thursday, but until then, I have picked out some newsworthy stories that made headlines this week.
Weekly highlights: Liberation Day
Labelled “Liberation Day”, President Trump announced the latest round of tariffs as part of a plan to hold many of America’s largest trading partners accountable for policies he claims has harmed the US. These include a 10% baseline tariff on all imports, as well as 10% and 20% tariffs on UK and EU goods respectively. Much smaller countries, including the African nation of Lesotho, face tariffs as high as 50%. British consumers were hit with a slew of rising costs this week after the UK failed to strike a deal with the US exempting the UK from damage.
The Autorité de la concurrence in France announced a €150,000,000 fine against Apple this week for abusing its dominant position in the sector for the distribution of mobile applications. A spokesperson for the watchdog told me Apple’s abuse impacted smaller publishers across the French market regardless of national origin.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Zukerberg’s Meta is pushing US government officials to impose retaliatory tariffs after the Big Tech giant was hit with an EU fine for alleged violation of digital competition rules.
Soundbite of the week: A call to action
Senator Cory Booker took to the Senate floor this week in protest against President Trump’s first months in office, setting a record for the longest active speech in the Senate that was previously set by a former South Carolina governor who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Senator Booker spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes. I share a snippet of his speech that can resonate with anyone fighting against monopoly power.
“When is it going to be enough? My voice is inadequate, my efforts today are inadequate to stop what they are trying to do. But we the people are powerful, we are strong, we have changed history, we have bent the arc of the moral universe and now is that moral moment again.”
Crunching the numbers: A cost of living crisis
As mentioned earlier in this newsletter, The Counterbalance will have a global perspective — much like the rest of The Balanced Economy Project’s work — but I would like to focus on the European Project for a moment.
According to Europe's “Eurobarometer” Winter Survey, EU membership approval rates have soared to a historic high.
Almost three quarters (74%) of people living in the bloc believe their country benefits from EU membership, the highest result ever recorded since the question was first asked over 40 years ago in 1983.
In and of itself, that is a noteworthy and potentially watershed moment for Europe. However, within this renewed wave of approval for the European Project, comes new support for economic issues that speak directly to the need for an economy that works for all of society, not just big business.
According to the survey, four in ten Europeans are urging the European Parliament to prioritise tackling inflation, rising prices and the cost of living.
Counterbalance is published every Thursday. Please send any thoughts and feedback to scott@balancedeconomy.org.