John Mark Newman
@johnmarknewman
Fmr. prof. @MiamiLaw, deputy director FTC Bureau of Competition, trial atty @ US DOJ Antitrust Division.
This is a sad day for American consumers, workers, and honest businesses, who are -- for now -- losing one of their most fearless and tireless champions.
To abide by ethics rules, today I'm stepping down as an FTC commissioner. I'm deeply grateful for the chance to have served my country in this way. And I look forward to building our ability to fight fraudsters and monopolists - regardless of how wealthy they are.
Antitrust trials used to go pretty hard. A DOJ lawyer apparently recited this speech verbatim to the jury in the old Socony-Vacuum case (late 1930s):
Just how widespread are these "zombie noncompetes"? Christopher Leslie found them for defunct grocery-store locations and then dead bank branches; now Hal finds one for a shuttered movie theater.
Recall my story of a barista in Falls Church who refused to sell me a matcha latte at the behest of a neighboring matcha store. Today I learned (from a co-worker) of a movie theater owner in Northern Vermont who inserts a non-compete in the sale of his shuttered movie theater …
Great news. The FTC has frankly been floundering. New leadership appears to have no coherent vision for how to protect American consumers, workers, and honest businesses. Comm'r Slaughter is the most experienced commissioner by far and has real ideas for fixing real problems.
Excited to be heading into the office this am! Top of the to-do list: calling a vote on restoring the Click to Cancel Rule. It’s time the FTC gets back to protecting consumers from real abuses like subscription traps that cost Americans countless hours and millions of dollars.
Great article👇 When historians piece together this century's grand narrative, one of the more bleak stories will be how Big Tech pushed "Learn to code!" as a policy solution, then used all those new coders to develop code that would destroy coding jobs.
You can read the whole piece by me and Gavin Sicard here. And special thanks to @tedtatos for amazing edits. thesling.org/microsoft-says…
Shameful confession: the event photog at #ASCOLA2025 captured me failing at literally every aspect of the menswear guy (@dieworkwear)'s advice. Conf. was still a blast, one of my very favorite events. No annoying egos, just legit friendly antitrust ppl from all over the world.
Are divestitures a bad thing, as some antitrust scholars suggest? We brought @econliberties’s Laurel Kilgour (@BalanceCrafting) onto the podcast to discuss this issue plus other remedies on the table in the Google search case. Go give it a watch! thesling.org/video/slingsho…
Good essay that makes the case for labor-market-focused antitrust analysis of M&A. DOJ's challenge of PRH/S&S and FTC's challenge of Kroger/Albertsons laid groundwork for future enforcement. In my view: it's always easier to bring the "next case" than the first one.
In a piece in the Regulatory Review this morning Melissa Bredbenner and urge the new administration not to abandon the Biden administration's antitrust concerns about labor. theregreview.org/2025/06/23/bre…
About to log off and drive an extremely unreliable 45-year-old car with no air conditioning on a very long road trip in the middle of summer. If you think of it send some good vibes my way...
Do I have this right: some massive banks got mad at PE firms hiring away their junior people, and this PE firm responded with, "Sorry, we won't do that anymore"? I thought this type of PE firm was supposed to be ruthlessly competitive, always seeking an edge, etc....
So some private equity firms have agreed to refrain from [checks notes] poaching junior bankers at the largest banks? Doesn’t sound anticompetitive to me at all. Not one bit. Also Jaime Dimon just doesn’t like competition for labor, apparently.