US: ‘Hipster Antitrust’ ally joins The Senate Judiciary Committee

According to Bloomberg, Senator Cory Booker, intends to use his new seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to keep a public spotlight on the effects of corporate concentration across US markets, including the potential impact on workers.

This January, Booker joined the Senate Judiciary Committee with Sen. Kamala Harris. There were two committee vacancies for Democrats coming into the new year. The appointment of Booker was more of a surprise, coming one year after Booker testified against the appointment of then-Senator Jeff Sessions (Republican-Alabama) as attorney general, a rare move for one senator to make against another, reported the Wall Street Journal in January.

Booker has been active in questioning mergers such as the one between Amazon.com Inc. and Whole Foods Market Inc. “I look forward to using my position on the committee to actively address and check monopoly and monopsony power and shape an economy that is better for workers, better for innovation, and better for our democracy,” Booker said in a statement provided to Bloomberg Law.

Booker’s new assignment to the Judiciary Committee was welcome news to advocates of expanded antitrust enforcement.

“Senator Booker has shown that he’s serious about reforming antitrust policy to take the anti-competitive impact of employer market power seriously, and that’s much needed on the Judiciary Committee,” Marshall Steinbaum, a research director at the Roosevelt Institute, told Bloomberg Law.

Full Content: The Washington Post

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