More Than 40 Groups Hail Groundbreaking Warren-Jones Anti-Merger Bill

Public Citizen and more than 40 civil society groups released a letter today in support of the Prohibiting Anticompetitive Mergers Act of 2022, a bill introduced by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) in both chambers of Congress. Labor, racial justice, environmental, small business, working families, farmers, musicians, and public interest groups singed the letter.

The Warren-Jones legislation signals a new era of trustbusting across the entire economy and is galvanizing a broad base of supporters. The bill addresses increasingly acute corporate concentration in America and proposes bold reforms to give the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice the tools to stop and unwind anticompetitive mergers.

"America has a corporate concentration and monopoly problem. Nearly every sector of every industry is highly concentrated," the letter reads. "Monopoly power lowers wages; reduces innovation and entrepreneurship; exacerbates income and regional inequality; undermines the free press and access to information; and perpetuates toxic systems of racial, gender, and class dominance."

"By banning the most harmful mergers outright, breaking up past mergers, and giving the agencies the power to review and reject other harmful mergers, this legislation would have an enormous impact on monopolies and concentration across the economy. This would result in more competition, better wages and conditions for workers, more consumer choice, an opportunity for small and minority-owned businesses to thrive, and reinvigoration of local and rural communities," the letter concludes.