The Honorable Bill Kovacic gives his outlook for antitrust enforcement in the Biden administration and distinguishes between antitrust Transformationalists and Traditionalists and their struggle for influence. He also discusses antitrust rulemaking, antitrust legislation, and Robinson-Patman enforcement.

Teddy talks with Claire Kelloway, a senior reporter with the Open Markets Institute. She’s also the primary writer for Food & Power, a website providing original reporting and resources on monopoly power in the food system. Claire gives her outlook for antitrust enforcement in the meat industry during the Biden administration.miheGBWc0OwEliouw3ea

Teddy chats with Seth Bloom, founder of Bloom Strategic Counsel and former General Counsel of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, to get his thoughts on which antitrust bills can pass Congress and get signed into law and which will be left on the cutting room floor. Seth and Teddy also talk about new priorities at the FTC, which already-consummated mergers the FTC might investigate and try to break up, and other parts of the FTC’s agenda that are being overlooked.

Teddy chats with Ron Knox, senior researcher and writer at The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, about his recent article in Wired Magazine, Big Music Needs to Be Broken Up to Save the Industry. He tells stories about why music is worse now than it was when the industry was more competitive, how Sweet Jane Recordings is actually owned by a big conglomerate, how independent record stores ended up with prescription cough syrup instead of indie records,how YouTube effectively sets a floor on streaming royalty rates, and how big radio pays no royalty rates for playing music.  Lastly, he talks about how he is optimistic that new antitrust leadership and new legislation in Congress will reshape the industry.

Teddy chats with Bill Baer about antitrust being at an inflection point, the consumer welfare test as "not even a useful construct anymore," antitrust rulemaking as a new tool in the enforcer toolbox, stepped up criminal antitrust enforcement, and a likely increase in focus on buyer power concerns from antitrust enforcers.

Following forty years of laissez-faire antitrust enforcement and industry consolidation, the White House is considering a fundamental rethink of how to interpret, enforce, and rewrite antitrust law, and many questions remain unanswered for the antitrust community.  On the heels of federal and state litigation against Google and Facebook, is Amazon next?  Will the new administration put big agriculture, big banks, and big pharma in its crosshairs?  Will the courts stop antitrust enforcers in their tracks?  Will the Biden administration get cold feet?Second Request provides in-depth discussions with antitrust experts about the answers to these questions and about proposed solutions to the biggest monopoly problems of our time.  Backed by the investigative resources and intellectual rigor of The Capitol Forum, Executive Editor and host Teddy Downey examines the effects of the current concentrations of market power across a vast array of industry verticals as he and his guests analyze the potential responses from the federal government. Offering thoughtful conversations with analysts and decision makers, Second Request provides everyone from C-Suite executives to policymakers, and all those in-between, strategic antitrust insights at the intersection of law, policy, and markets.