by Eric Lendrum
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a new bill on Monday that would break up several large companies in the United States, with a particular focus on the Big Tech companies, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The bill is called the “Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act,” and aims to combat “anti-competitive big business” such as “Big Banks, Big Telecom, and Big Pharma.” In his press release announcing the new legislation, Hawley said that “a small group of woke mega-corporations control the products Americans can buy, the information Americans can receive, and the speech Americans can engage in.”
“These monopoly powers control our speech, our economy, our country,” Hawley continued, “and their control has only grown because Washington has aided and abetted their quest for endless power.”
The bill, if signed into law, would ban companies worth over $100 billion from performing mergers and acquisitions, and would also ease federal regulations imposed by the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts so that the federal government could more easily break up big companies.
In a statement to the media, Hawley declared that “this country and this government shouldn’t be run by a few mega-corporations,” and that the Republican Party should “become the party of trust-busting once again,” pointing out that “that’s a part of our history.”
Antitrust legislation may be one of the few issues that could earn bipartisan support in Washington. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced an antitrust bill of her own in February, which Hawley supported. In the House of Representatives, Congressman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) is also planning to introduce his own bill on the issue sometime next month.
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
