Giant corporations use their outsized power to push out small businesses, drive down wages, and extract our resources. All the while, corporations get more powerful, and when they make more profit elsewhere, they often disinvest, move operations, and leave our communities to clean up the mess. This overreach is only possible because the government turns a blind eye, or in many cases, actively gives corporations unfair advantages. The government needs to rebalance who has decision-making power and should:
Rein in Unchecked Corporate Greed
- Ensure fair competition by enforcing and strengthening antitrust policy.1 Stop incentives for corporate executives from profiting off of harming workers and limit stock buybacks.2
- Biden’s order on Competition in the American Economy directed agencies across the federal government to rein in giant corporations that have unfairly monopolized markets, hurting small businesses and driving up costs for America’s families. While this was an important and unprecedented order, agencies often moved slowly. Examples of progress include the USDA finalizing three rules that will improve fairness for producers, particularly those who grow livestock under contract. It supported poultry farmers to get better pay by effectively ending a deeply anti-competitive payment scheme from one of the world’s largest poultry processors. It also established a Chief Competition Officer and opened the Cattle Contracts Library Pilot Program. The USDA proposed a fourth rule to establish criteria for fair and competitive markets in the livestock, meat, and poultry industries, yet the rule wasn’t completed. During the Biden Administration, we did not accomplish nearly as much as many had hoped in revising the Packers and Stockyards Act. We made significant progress, but only a small step towards combating corporate power.
- Trump revoked the 2021 order on Competition in the American Economy.
- Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened a wide range of investigations. The DOJ’s lawsuit and proposed consent decree to prohibit Koch Foods from imposing termination penalties for its chicken grower contracts removes an anticompetitive tool used by abusive meatpacking corporations. It also launched a new enforcement effort with state attorneys general to address anticompetitive and anti-consumer practices in food and agricultural markets.
- After the Trump Administration removed two FTC members, the FTC voted to drop the suit.
- DOJ and FTC’s new merger guidelines help restore competition in the economy to the benefit of farmers, consumers, and small businesses. The 2021-2022 Congress increased funding for antitrust enforcement by passing the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which increases the fees companies pay when they propose mergers. This act gives antitrust enforcers the resources they need to ensure that corporations don’t hurt working people and small businesses and play by the rules.
- Stop requiring farmers to pay corporate agribusiness lobbying groups that oppose rural priorities. Reform Checkoff Programs and de-fund corporate agribusiness lobbying groups that stand in the way of independent producers.3
- Reshape crop insurance and other programs for smaller farms and farms with diverse agricultural operations. Prioritize smaller farms rather than line the pockets of big insurance companies or incentivize corporate investors to drive up farmland prices.
- The 2021-2022 Congress invested $20 billion in voluntary conservation programs to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change. In a rare victory, these funds did not include the typical 50% requirement for livestock operations — an important step in reducing taxpayers’ funding of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.
- The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act increases subsidies for the largest commodity crop farms without addressing dozens of programs that support smaller farmers and those selling food to their neighbors through local and regional markets.
- Empower people to fix their equipment and property through a strong right to repair policy.4 Corporations have used their market power to take away this right by creating restrictive contracts and denying independent repairers access to critical information. Fixing your own car or tractor or opening a small shop to work on your neighbors’ equipment is a long tradition in rural America that corporations shouldn’t take away.
- Right-to-repair laws have seen significant progress, including the FTC’s 2024 investigation and subsequent collaboration with several states in a lawsuit against John Deere’s anticompetitive practices. Colorado also became the first state to enact laws guaranteeing the right to repair farm equipment, with many more states considering similar enactments.
- Prevent corporate lobbyists from overruling state and local decisions that shape land use, natural resources, health and safety protections, and food systems.5
- Stop the giveaways of public lands and publicly owned natural resources, and oppose the use and expansion of eminent domain for private gain.
- Make corporations and the ultrawealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
- Defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies responsible for making sure corporations don’t rip off consumers.
Notes
- The Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act is an important model towards dealing with extreme levels of monopolization in the agriculture sector. Enforcement standards and rules related to Robinson-Patman Act and Packers and Stockyard Act are also key mechanisms for fair competition.
- See the Reward Work Act.
- See the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming Act.
- See the Agriculture Right to Repair Act.
- Protect local decision making power and reject preemption efforts such as The Food Security and Farm Protection Act. Formerly called the EATS Act, if passed it would strip states and local governments of their ability to enact laws on agriculture, food safety, and animal welfare. This federal overreach undermines rural communities’ rights to self-determination and threatens a wide range of protections tailored to local needs. The Act has been rebranded as the Food Security and Farm Protection Act and there are attempts to include portions of it in the Farm Bill and other megabill packages.