Albrt had an informative piece cross posted right here at NC yesterday specializing in methods to measure whether or not Trump is enhancing the alignment of the Republican get together with the working class or promoting out his supporters and persevering with uniparty rule for the oligarchs. Albrt focuses on the coverage areas of immigration, tariffs and manufacturing, vitality, firing (sure) federal employees, medication, and options to the faculty path.
One which ought to be added to the checklist is antitrust coverage, specifically will Trump proceed the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in so-called “info sharing”?
Oddly, Biden officers exterior of the Division of Justice Antitrust Division and the Lina Khan-led Federal Commerce Fee not often ever talked about it, and the Kamala marketing campaign definitely didn’t marketing campaign on it.
Entrance and heart within the info sharing area is an enormous case in opposition to RealPage. The DOJ and eight states on August 23 sued the personal equity-owned firm that allegedly operates as the center man in a nationwide property administration cartel that has despatched hire by means of the roof. The civil lawsuit accuses RealPage of utilizing the software program it sells to actual property administration corporations to orchestrate an unlawful price-fixing scheme, which all however eliminates competitors amongst mega landlords, permits them to spice up costs, and acted as a significant factor in skyrocketing rents in recent times.
RealPage and the rental administration corporations, a lot of that are personal equity-owned, are additionally going through dozens of sophistication motion lawsuits from tenants. A separate lawsuit in opposition to Santa Barbara-based Yardi, an organization just like RealPage, accuses it of utilizing its RENTmaximizer (now Income IQ) product to do precisely what RealPage is accused of doing.The DOJ additionally opened a felony investigation into RealPage, and the massive condominium house owners and managers that use the corporate’s pricing software program, to find out if the agency is facilitating worth fixing.
The DOJ crackdown on RealPage got here as a part of a significant antitrust shift that closed Clinton-era loopholes on “info sharing.” That call was a significant win for People because it lowered the bar for antitrust circumstances — a bar that was beforehand so excessive you might drive a double decker bus by means of it and have room to spare.
Along with RealPage, there may be additionally the open DOJ antitrust lawsuit in opposition to Agri Stats Inc. for working anticompetitive info exchanges amongst broiler hen, pork and turkey processors. Agri Stats allegedly collects, integrates and distributes worth, value and output info amongst competing meat processors, which permits them to coordinate output and costs with the intention to maximize income. The very fact discovery within the Agri Stats case is set to shut on January 24, with dispositive motions due by July 2.
What’s going to come of the RealPage case and wider efforts to rein in cartel conduct below Trump 2.0? To totally recognize the stakes let’s first take a deeper have a look at what RealPage does and the way now-closed Clinton-era loopholes (propagated by each administration after up till Biden) opened the floodgates to cartel takeovers of the American economic system.
Why the Lease Is Too Rattling Excessive
In 2011, Warren Buffett mentioned informed the Monetary Disaster Inquiry Fee the next:
“The only most vital choice in evaluating a enterprise is pricing energy. When you’ve acquired the facility to boost costs with out shedding enterprise to a competitor, you’ve acquired an excellent enterprise. And if you must have a prayer session earlier than elevating the worth by 10 p.c, you then’ve acquired a horrible enterprise.”
That sort of pricing energy got here to many multi-family rental markets in recent times the place main Wall Road house owners turned to rental administration software program that basically acts as collusion software program. It units costs and emptiness charges and helps the underside line as a result of property managers know that their “rivals” are additionally utilizing RealPage’s system and won’t undercut them. Firm government Andrew Bowen as soon as mentioned that the software program was “driving it,” referring to rental worth will increase. He added: “As a property supervisor, only a few of us can be keen to really increase rents double digits inside a single month by doing it manually.”
That pricing energy from collusion enable RealPage and its friends like Yardi to play a task within the scholar mortgage disaster and college students sleeping in automobiles. They play a task within the homelessness disaster. And so they nearly definitely play a task in your hire being so excessive — whether or not your landlord makes use of their software program or not.
To actually get a really feel for the impact of the RealPage and property administration firm cartel, it’s greatest to have a look at particular person metro markets. That’s as a result of in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Nashville, Dallas, Atlanta, and so on. the market might be dominated by giant (oftentimes personal equity-owned) corporations, and if all of them are colluding utilizing RealPage, the impact might be huge. In Los Angeles County, for instance, 79 p.c of all multifamily rental items are being listed utilizing collusion software program.
Speculative funding automobiles have taken over a lot of the housing market, a pattern that took off in the course of the foreclosures regime of Obama when predatory billionaire buyers more and more started to purchase up an unprecedented share of single-family houses, condominium buildings, cell residence parks, and the government-subsidized inexpensive housing sector. They’ve additionally been probably the most keen adopters of collusion software program which successfully permits them to behave as a cartel over many metro housing markets.
What occurs with RealPage below Trump gained’t simply be confined to shelter. The DOJ’s up to date stance on “information-sharing” impacts different requirements like well being care the place People pay greater than anybody else within the “superior” world for the worst outcomes and meals the place cartel conduct contributes to the eye-watering value of a visit to the grocery retailer these days.
Because the new administration will inherit the DOJ’s RealPage litigation, what route it takes will inform us rather a lot about its wider place on the trade of competitively delicate info by means of the usage of algorithmic software program and doubtlessly AI.
Closing Clinton-Period Loopholes Huge Sufficient to Drive a Truck By means of
Between 1993 and 2011 the Division of Justice Antitrust Division issued a trio of coverage statements (two in the course of the Clinton administration and one below Obama) relating to the sharing of data within the healthcare business. These guidelines supplied wiggle room across the Sherman Antitrust Act, which “units forth the fundamental antitrust prohibition in opposition to contracts, combos, and conspiracies in restraint of commerce or commerce.”
And it wasn’t simply in healthcare. The foundations have been interpreted to use to all industries. Corporations more and more turned to information companies providing software program that “exchanges info” at lightning velocity with rivals with the intention to preserve wages low and costs excessive – successfully creating nationwide cartels. The tip outcome was RealPage, Yardi, and others like a long-running conspiracy amongst poultry producers to trade details about wages and advantages for plant employees and collaborate with their rivals on compensation choices.
In Feb. of 2023 the DOJ closed the information-sharing loopholes. From the assertion asserting that call:
After cautious overview and consideration, the division has decided that the withdrawal of the three statements is the perfect plan of action for selling competitors and transparency. Over the previous three a long time since this steering was first launched, the healthcare panorama has modified considerably. Because of this, the statements are overly permissive on sure topics, similar to info sharing, and not serve their supposed functions of offering encompassing steering to the general public on related healthcare competitors points in in the present day’s surroundings. Withdrawal due to this fact greatest serves the curiosity of transparency with respect to the Antitrust Division’s enforcement coverage in healthcare markets. Latest enforcement actions and competitors advocacy in healthcare present steering to the general public, and a case-by-case enforcement strategy will enable the Division to higher consider mergers and conduct in healthcare markets that will hurt competitors.
Primarily, the Biden DOJ took the logical strategy that longstanding antitrust ideas barring rivals from utilizing human interplay to repair costs and wages applies equally to the usage of software program algorithms or AI.
However no judicial choice has but adopted the DOJ’s place, and the incoming Trump administration can merely reverse the Biden DOJ choice. It stays unclear which means the Trump DOJ will go, however the seek for indicators is on. From Mintz, a “a litigation powerhouse and enterprise accelerator serving leaders in life sciences, personal fairness, vitality, and expertise”:
As January 20, 2025, approaches, antitrust practitioners and the enterprise communities are looking for clues whether or not the incoming Trump Administration and its antitrust officers will proceed the Biden Administration’s strategy to the trade of competitively delicate info, significantly by means of the usage of algorithmic software program.
Will Trump aspect with the billionaires seething over the DOJ and FTC efforts to rein of their rapaciousness ever so barely or his working class supporters seething over their lengthy decline in residing requirements attributable to these billionaires?
Causes for Skepticism
- Trump has promised to unleash AI upon taking workplace, which incorporates eliminating the minimal Biden administration protections:
Throughout the marketing campaign, Silicon Valley figures like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen helped form the President-elect’s tech coverage agenda. To “take the lead over China” on AI, marketing campaign allies mentioned the brand new administration will discard Biden’s AI guardrails and go full steam forward on autonomous weapons, intelligence, and cybersecurity.
Nonetheless, it stays to be seen if that can apply to collusion software program.
- Pam Bondi
Any hope that Trump’s first decide for legal professional basic, Matt Gaetz, would usher in a “Khanservative” DOJ appears to be like prefer it’s circling the drain with Trump’s new decide Pam Bondi. Gaetz sexual proclivities have been used to torpedo his nomination, probably on account of his antitrust views.
In the meantime, the whole lot in regards to the company lobbyist and foreclosures fraudster Bondi says that it’ll be open season for info sharing once more.
3. Trump 1.0 and RealPage
It’s price remembering that RealPage actually took off following an important choice by the primary Trump administration: the 2017 merger between RealPage and its largest pricing competitor. In line with ProPublica, some DOJ workers raised issues in regards to the merger however have been overridden by political appointees of Trump.
Causes for Guarded Optimism
- The GOP is altering
Because the failed nomination of Gaetz confirmed, Republicans are not universally against antitrust. Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for instance, maintain comparable views as Gaetz. George Washington College Regulation College professor William Kovacic, who served on the FTC from 2006 to 2011 and was chair from 2008 to 2009. With extra through Roll Name:
Kovacic identified that Trump’s antitrust enforcers filed one of many circumstances in opposition to Google and Meta and began the investigation into what ultimately grew to become the case in opposition to Apple within the first time period.
“I can’t readily think about them pulling the plug on these circumstances, as a result of you’ve gotten this coalition that wishes that type of scrutiny to proceed,” Kovacic mentioned.
Kovacic mentioned a throughline for each the Biden administration strategy to antitrust and conservative criticism of massive tech corporations is {that a} conventional antitrust strategy that emphasizes costs is just not sufficient.Biden administration circumstances have mentioned issues round competitors for small companies and safety for native communities, whereas conservatives have criticized tech corporations for allegedly censoring conservative voices on-line — each issues have little to do with costs.
Nonetheless, he identified that Republican commissioners on the FTC have objected to a number of of the company’s strikes and rulemakings and will reverse them within the second Trump administration, together with its rule banning noncompete agreements. Kovacic additionally mentioned that the Biden administration’s extra aggressive strategy on mergers — suing to cease them quite than accepting settlements to minimize the antitrust issues created by a deal — might fall by the wayside for each the FTC and DOJ.
If — and it is a huge if — Trump needs to do proper by his voters, he wouldn’t solely proceed the Biden administration’s antitrust motion however ramp it up.
- J.D. Vance.
Throughout the marketing campaign, Vance on his “populist campaign”, made guarantees to proceed antitrust enforcement, usually sounding extra like Bernie Sanders than a standard Republican, however does he imply any of it? Or, as Thomas Frank has lengthy highlighted, are Republicans like Vance merely adopting the language of the putative American Left to successfully appeal to voters lengthy deserted by the Democrats?
Whereas sensible politically (there’s a purpose Bernie was widespread and the Democrats had to make use of soiled techniques to kill his campaigns) there may very well be limits to Vance’s “populist campaign” and so they’re set by Silicon Valley. Vance hails from each the enterprise capital world and the poverty of West Virginia. Who will he prioritize?
And right here’s the place this level turns into one other one for skepticism. From The Verge:
Vance has performed at being a person of the folks, however he owes his place on Trump’s ticket to Silicon Valley’s billionaires. In spite of everything, he’s a pet of Thiel, who put ahead $15 million for Vance’s Ohio Senate marketing campaign. (There have been different rich donors, too, together with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.)
Whereas reassuring Silicon Valley it is going to nonetheless have entry to “high-talent, high-quality” employees, Vance is main the cost in shifting the blame for People’ lengthy decline in residing requirements onto immigrants, which might work for a brief interval till folks discover that their lives aren’t enhancing all that a lot. It might additionally divert consideration away from antitrust points and circumstances like RealPage.
Nonetheless, it’s a low bar to clear to be higher than the sanctimonious Democrats at this level. An finish to all of the lectures is likely to be welcome even when it doesn’t essentially end in an enhancing high quality of life.
If we’re counting, that’s 4 factors for skepticism and 1.5 for optimism. Fortunately, some tenants aren’t ready for the Trump administration to sort things.
Tenant Motion
No matter what occurs with RealPage, housing coverage within the US is so geared in the direction of hire looking for and the fixes wanted are so quite a few that the trail ahead is unlikely to originate in DC.
Tenants throughout the nation are more and more taking issues into their very own fingers.
A rising variety of tenants’ unions throughout the nation are coordinating hire strikes to protest hire will increase and decrepit residing circumstances. And so they’re discovering some success. A union in Kansas Metropolis, for instance, used a hire strike to get tens of millions in overdue repairs to their constructing. Different Kansas Metropolis tenant unions are emulating that profitable hire strike, and extra motion like this may very well be on the way in which in accordance with Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation:
Absent significant motion from the federal government, the query is just not whether or not tenants will revolt, however whether or not the revolt will probably be from a spot of desperation or a spot of energy. To make sure the latter, tenants are organizing unions, from Bozeman, Montana, to Louisville, Kentucky. Unions are uniting throughout geography, and aligning by means of teams just like the newly launched Tenant Union Federation, which we launched this yr. Drawing inspiration from the labor motion and group organizing, tenant unions mirror the urgency to construct a brand new type of energy to significantly contest the forces of actual property capital.
Tenant unions search a distinct system totally, the place houses usually are not handled as commodities however assured as public items, and the place our lives usually are not lowered to line gadgets in a landlord’s finances. This imaginative and prescient isn’t a radical fever dream; it’s the solely means out of this mess. Finally, attaining this imaginative and prescient would require rejecting the market as we all know it in the present day and creating publicly backed, nonmarket options. Earlier than we get there, tenants want protections. As tenants construct native energy inside buildings and throughout neighborhoods, these unions are additionally demanding a regulatory agenda.
Gourevitch and Raghuveer go on to stipulate that regulatory agenda, which incorporates nationwide hire caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability requirements, and antitrust motion to forestall consolidation and collusion within the rental market.
Even higher can be tenant-owned housing, similar to what occurred in Maine just lately when residents of Linnhaven Cellular House Middle, a group of practically 300 occupied houses in Brunswick, banded collectively to purchase their trailer park to forestall it from falling into the fingers of personal fairness.
Actions like that and tenant group are more likely to show far simpler than counting on Trump, Bondi, or no matter ghoul the Democrats put in workplace subsequent.
