congresswoman. ♪ ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including spark light. >> the greatest town on earth is the place you call home. at spark light it's our home too and right now we are all facing our greatest challenge, that's why spark light is working around clock to keep you connected. we are doing our part so it's a little easier to do yours. >> spark light supports c-span as public serce along with these other tevision providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> the federal trade commission and justice department cohosted a summit on enforcing antitrust law and consumer protection, in

this session we will hear from biden administration officials including agriculture secretary, u.s. trade representative katherine ti and consumer financial protection bureau director rody, this is just over an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> it has generated extraordinary benefits already but pioneered a hold of government approach to competition policy, one that has not only made a huge impact but has transformed the way we think about competition policy in the united states and has again rated an extraordinary gathering of people today. i think for those in the antitrust community to see the extraordinary distinguished panel that we have today speaks volumes and so they all need very little introduction, so i will just introduced them by name and we will get right into it because i'm sure everyone here is particularly interested

in hearing from them. first to my left is the secretary of united states secretary of agriculture. we have ambassador katherine of the u.s. trade representative, director of the cfpd chopra and chairman of the securities exchange commission gary and last but certainly not least chair of the service transportation board mark boberman, thank you all for being with us today. [applause] it would be wonderful to start at the outset and explain to us how you think about competition policy in the con text of your agency and your mission, secretary, if you can kick us off? >> i think it's critically important. we've lost 644,970 farms since bob was secretary of agriculture raised concerns about consolidation of farmland and what we have seen over the

course of the last 40 years is a consolidation of just about everything connected to ago hour which means it's very hard for small and mid size operations to have a shot until this administration came along. we not only have a whole of government opportunity we've worked very closely with the department of justice in a partnership that has resulted in fair opportunities for farmers, ranchers and bruisers and for rural america but we also see as a whole of usda we basically pattern that process within usda, we looked at regulations, we looked at investments and we also looked at opportunities for partnership, partners, for example, not only with the department of justice and with the other agencies that are represented here today but also state attorney general and opportunity to essentially work in partnership and provide resources for greater enforcement at the state and local level, so a hold of government means quite a bit to us and we have seen benefits and results of it.

>> wonderful. ambassador tai. >> so we begin with the tenants of president biden's vision for the american economy which is -- it is an economy that will be strengthened and invigorated by building from the middle out and from the bottom up and the competition piece of this, obviously 3 main pillars to the biden economics approach that we are making right now and empowering and educating our workers who are the backbone of our economy and then the third pilar is competition, we talk about competition policy in policy circles and i think it's apparent to us what that means and i think when we break it down, what it really means is what we are trying to do through all of our economic efforts and

all of the economic disciplines is to create more economic opportunities to democratize and it's really bo-tom up middle-up vision to a trickled down approach. it's important for us at ustr because the trickle-down approach has informed processes as well as our mindset for the past many decades where the assumption was that if you formulated trade policies and executed them in a way that benefited the largest economic stakeholders, the most well resourced, the most savvy that that would naturally be a proxy for the interest of those stakeholders workers and the communities that they work in. and what we've seen over time is limitation of that trickle-down approach, domestically and also

internationally. so what that means for us at ustr those processed in terms of how we engage with our stakeholders, which stakeholders we are now trying to bring to the table traditionally say the unseen underappreciated, underheard stakeholders to the policies themselves. we are asking the question how do we create policies, what should this these policies look like if they are to benefit a broader set of stakeholders, stakeholders that include small, medium start-ups and individuals. >> director, thank you again for hosting this really great to see former ftc colleagues here as well as from the international enforcement agencies. i've gotten the chance to know. let me build on what secretary billsack and secretary tai have

said that i think we will look at competition now not just a thing to decide but as core part of how we want to build the economy and also how we want people to feel they have power in it. i think when i think about our work at the cipb, competition just feels so fundamental to people's lives, what is the rate they are going to be able to get their mortgage at, how much are they going to have to pay on their credit card, the things that are so much about the monthly bills and i think we see in so many sectors of the economy the people basically feel bullied or coerced into paying junk fees into paying much more for something that a competitive market would normally serve. so we actually at the cfpb have a clear statutory command from

congress to make sure markets are fair, transparent and competitive and so we are trying to think of all the ways in which people are spending, tapping, swiping, borrowing and how can we shift billions and billions of dollars back to them using all sorts of tools. we really rethought our approach to regulation. we really rethought how we are looking and diagnosing problems in markets and at the end of the day we now see this as a fundamental tenant of how the agency will address its work now and into the future. >> thank you. >> thank you and i want to thank chair khan and john then for chairing this and bringing this all together. you might say, wait, why is that? well, in 1930's we were set up

because there was a collapse in trust in our capital markets and president roosevelt and congress worked to make sure we were disclosure agency that you get the nation you need to make an investment decision and also they addressed integrity. deeply there was a problem deep problems in the capital markets at the time but actually president ford 40 years later came back and infused in our statute not once or twice but in 20 different places competition and the problem was and president ford understood this in the 70's and that's been truth. that's a structural thing about the advantages that come from having centrality in the capital markets where the pricing of financial assets happened.

but so that mandate helps the american public. our clients are 330 million americans, the investors and the issuers because they are issuing through the mortgage market, they are issuing their student loans ultimately through capital markets or they are starting small businesses or they work for a big business that access the capital markets and so from president ford's work interestingly during president clinton's time congress came back and said every rule-making we do, every major thing we do, we have to look at efficiency, competition and capital formation. think about that? congress didn't just not just president ford but president clinton came back asaid efficiency and competition. we are infused with it. we are working for the american public to update competition in the equity market which by the way is about 50 or $55 trillion in size.

that's a stock market. that's how we found our government but you want to lower those funding costs and we are doing something called private funds which believe it or not are larger than the entire banking system. hedge funds, private equity and so forth. we take it seriously. [laughter] >> absolutely.

>> they've been at it for 200 years since they were formed. >> the industry had fallen in hard times by 1980 and was way overregulated and many railroads had gone near bankruptcy and so congress passed a famous act which was substantially deregulatory but also encouraged consolidation and there was some merit to that. but the pendulum has swung way too far. when i think about competition, of course, it's the lack of competition in our industry.

which means for a very significant percentage of rail shippers they are captive to one railroad and had become monopolies -- -- duapolies. they have cut services and greatly jacked up profits largely by greatly reducing the workforce, the railroads have fired about 30% of workers in the last decade, 45,000 people.

rail service has greatly deteriorated and we are supposed to emphasize competition that's in our statute but it's very hard to have competition where the entry are insurmountable and nobody is going to build a new railroad so we have to -- to push as much as we can. we don't like to overregulate the railroads say you should let the market determine things and i say, yes, the market is the ideal way to determine things but for that to happen you have specifics of what we have been t accomplishing and what nee to be accomplished but we should keep in mind 40% of all long distance freight in this country moves on rail, the economy cannot survive without rail, the average consumer doesn't know about it. they don't buy carload of grain,

they buy a loaf of bread but the way the railroad handles and goes directly to what the loaf of bread costs and we have to keep an eye on that. i will say that as a chairman of an independent agency and you are too, we have a little bit different relationship to the white house executive order but the good coincidence for me is that my views on these competition on the rail industry were parallel to what the president was trying to and we have been able, i think, to work very much in tandem and i think this competition council has been a very reinforcing force throughout government and it really helps the momentum inside my agency, i think, and helps me in my leadership role to push everybody towards emphasizing improving competition. so it's been a significant event. >> thank you, truly remarkable

hearing all of you, the administration and the whole of government approach is an incredibly coherent and sophisticated way to think about competition policy and it affects farmers, it affects our equities market and it affects trade, junk fees, the og monopolists and i think truly exceptional experience to what we are hearing from all of you today which is that this is a common thread, it is a common animating theme that goes into policy making across our government. along those lines and along the lines of what chairman was discussing regarding the executive order and the competition council i thought it might be interesting to hear from all of you about your views of the competition council, the opportunity to work together with agencies across the government and how you think it has changed if at all your

approach and the government's approach thinking about competition policy. secretary bilsack. >> i think it has create master's degree juice and the opportunity to work collaboratively with the department of justice encouraging farmers in to let us know when they think there is something going on in the marketplace that isn't quite right. this is led to the prosecution of several successful opportunities between our two agencies to give farmers a better shake and a better opportunity, an opportunity for us to work with the u.s. trade -- that might seem strange to people but in the seed business there's been a consolidation of seed companies and maybe the way in which the patent laws have been used may have allowed them to essentially expand their power in the marketplace, now we are working collaboratively with the patent and trade office so the farmers' voice is being

heard when patents are being reviewed. this gives us an opportunity to expand opportunities in the space and i think the competition council has actually created competition within the departments. we like to maybe have a product with u.s. label that basically allows folks to understand and appreciate when they are buying something and says product of the u.s. it actually means that everything was done without animal, processing, grazing and so forth was all done in the u.s. i think t created this opportunity for little healthy competition within the council and it has certainly encouraged us to continue to look in ways to invest in expanding opportunity as well. >> wonderful. >> you know, it's truly interesting the whole of government approach. you see it across the board and means something different and you look at it in the whole it's

a comprehensive inconsistent from the ustr perspective i think the really important part of where we plug in is the middle-out bottom-up growth model seeing it's guiding principle for our domestic economy and it's also guiding principle with how we engage international relationship and policy, what we are trying to do the biden vision is how do we not only build and strengthen our middle class here at home and how do we do that in partnership with other markets and other countries at the same time. in terms of the consolidation and concentration that we see in our domestic market that the domestic competition enforcers are taking on so admirably and so clearly, the international market is marked by similar dynamics of concentration and

consolidation that have similar harms for consumers, workers, economic growth models to think that what is very clear to us is just as in the domestic context what our antimonopoly champions and are we doing in the international context. you look at the supply chain challenges that we have today marked by concentration and consolidation on the supply side the fragilities that we are encountering every single month it feels like that gives us a lot of inspiration to carry over a lot of the principes from the domestic competition side into the essential context. similarly and this is an area where secretary vil subpoenasacd quite a bit. not just monopolies on the

surprise side but beholding to consumer consolidation and power and in that regard a lot of what we are doing in partnership with usda is consorted push for diversification of export markets for our farmers and also a championing of not just the big corporate interest in the united states but the smalls and the mediums, the specialty crop growers and looking for opportunities to create more export access for them. >> we have a script -- >> i want to do a little hat tip not just to the president but also to two individual that is run the council brian was the head of the economic council and now brainard who chair the council and brian understood the role of council sometimes is

just con seen mechanism when the white house gets us all together as secretary vilsack it creates competition. you to get in the room once every 3 or 5 months or so and do the one page like what did my cabinet department or sec or accomplished so there was a little bit of -- and brian have been good at kind healthy competition amongst the agencies. i'd say that's positive. number 2 is i learned a lot from my colleagues. every time secretary vilsack or director chopra tells what you say they are doing, they are great messaging people too. with all respect, you can't move policy in washington unless you can explain to it the american public and secretary vilsack would come in and brian would give them complements and i would think -- i have to be able to connect to the american public on what we are doing at

the sec which is a more technical piece of it. i'd say we have really lively conversations with the federal trade commission, justice department about competition in the market which have benefited us and one topic that we have had on the sides of the councils and artificial intelligence and before bruce steps up ai council we were talking about ai because what we have supply chain risk there too. the supply chain risk, the top 3 cloud providers in the u.s., you know their names, the top two 75% use this top two. and if artificial intelligence is built on top of that and that's exactly what we are

seeing, we will see economic events and stability events also -- so i just mentioned sometimes it's colliding on important topics of the change in technology. >> yeah. and important opportunity to learn from each other which is critical to our respective missions. as part of the work regarding the executive order, maybe some of you can help animate that work by highlighting specific achievements or areas of collaboration that speak for the benefits of the executive order and the whole of government approach and maybe director chopra you can kick us off. >> having previously served as an antitrust enforcer it's

really just stark to shift to see in a way and the page turning that we've all done, there used to be this view and it was so sill write you would hear people in the ni antitrust say we are not regulators as if that was some sort of complement to themselves. in reality, all of this is about markets, creating the opportunities for markets. i think so much of the way we've accelerated actually through rules. sec rules about the capital markets. one of the best examples, 20, 30 years ago our communication's regulator, is fcc issues an order saying people can take care wireless phone number with them when they switch to a new provider. these are rules and so what we've all thought about are what are the rules that we can do to

jumpstart lots of competitive intensity on so many different sectors, so the assisting ag have talked about this a lot. the idea that you as a consumer can switch seamlessly without so much bureaucracy and red tape. if you are getting treated poorly by your credit card company and your bank, we will provide the ways to fire them. we will provide new ways for you to take your data with you so that you are able to get better products underwritten to you at lower .. .. .. ..

and guess what happens right after? lower pharma lending lower small business like the community goes down with them. we actually restored rigor and analysis rather then just lazily assuming bigger is better. it is such an important shift that i think is underpinning so much of our work. i also want to add it has been so good for the economic policy world here in the u.s. but also overseas. we've already known agriculture,

trade, financial regulation all key pillars of economic policy. now antitrust enforcers are no longer seen as a side dish or scene off in the wilderness. they are at the table and part of the poor way of conducting economic policymaking. i think that really has been a fundamental shift i hope we will see round the world as well. quick fascinating. determine if you talk about some of the work you have done in collaboration with other agencies or the executive order? >> thanks. first i have to say i was informed my first remarks might microphone was turned off. so i now have a different microphone. >> sorry about that her. brickworksurmised numerous firsd to the city council 49 years ago mayor daley did not like what i was saying but he would cut off my microphone. [laughter] now i'm ending my career it's

coming back. [laughter] cooksey remarks were excellent. [laughter] i don't think jonathan cut you off at picnics on the sure he surelylied nothing to do with i. i hope this is a working microphone. so, it may sound surprising one of our accomplishments unless two or three years has been to approve what i think it's almost certain to be the last of the road mergers the canadian pacific and the kansas city southern. part of that is because the statutes under which we operate gives sole legal authority on a ruling on a railroad mergers. it's unlike any other industry. even if jonathan does not get to review it but i guess that's good to file briefs with us which are extraordinarily helpful and important in the work that we did. but, it was an important merger those two railroads were the

smallest of the large railroads. separately they were not providing the kind of leverage and offsetting power against much much larger railroads. plus of this merger enabled these railroads to offer for the first time single-line rail service from canada through the united states into new mexico. particularly with the on shoring and near shoring effort we are going to be seeing the next few years. having that seamless rail service was very important. most importantly for purposes of competition what is happened since that merger is other large railroads have made arrangements for their own interline service. they are not merging but railroads work together to offer a competing service for that single line service between canada, the united states, and mexico. these were opportunities sitting out there to be taken for

decades under the rules were stimulated to deal with them because they did not have too. once the merger began to show the benefits of that service we have now seen several other competing lines to move traffic and similar areas it's really been helpful in an industry which has almost no competition. so ironically what we did and that merger really helped. we also strong conditioning authority. we put in very stringent conditions on the merger to keep open all pre-existing gateways. wherever shipper set opportunities to interchange with other railroads which might be cut off by this merger those were required to be kept open permanently on commercially reasonable terms a very important condition. we instituted seven-year post merger monitoring. the longest in history that's ever happened in a railroad

merger. that was really a significant achievement to try to protect what competition we can. a couple of other things to mention we cannot in all cases create competition. we found in the spring of 2022 because of the decrease in workforce and cutting back on services and raising prices rail services reach crisis proportion in this country. the railroad executives along with other stakeholders and held them accountable in a public obsession which is never happened before. and as a result of that instituted for the last two years a detailed biweekly monthly reporting on hiring part or are they going to do to replace the lost crews and

equally importantly what were their goals to restore service to improve levels? and as a result of that things have improved. they have a long way to go. if you can't improve service by having actual competition this comes into regulatory effect no one wants to be regulated we'd rather not regulate them but they cannot grow up and behave properly by themselves, we are there. i'm going to say for the next moment to talk about further competitive access efforts. these are ongoing and not quite done yet. those are kind of the main things. >> with the opportunity to talk a little bit about how we have been able to utilize the competition counsel and a more competitive economy using a whole of government approach. it will be helpful to think about what does the road ahead look like? the next six months and maybe secretary bill sack you couldn't

kick it off and what are you thinking about going forward? >> i'm the first person to have come back to the department of agriculture job having served in the obama administration i appreciate what's made can be unmade. it's incredibly important for us to continue to build the momentum. more work which is probably one of our fundamental tools to try to balance integrators and poultry producers for example a marketplace has become incredibly efficient but very unfair to producers. we work with the department of justice to formulate rules and regulations to provide for greater transparency. to focus on acts of discrimination and retaliation provide farmers a better opportunity to protect themselves in the marketplace. i think we have to go a bit further. the system for the poultry producers has to be reformed and structured in a way that does

provide better balance. we have to address a prior court cases that have made it very difficult for farmers who themselves have been hurt but the industry as a whole has not. there's also work to be done and creating more competition just generally. we found out during the pandemic that while our processing operations were incredibly efficient they were not particularly resilient or if there is a disruption one or two plants across the country it caused havoc. we have investing resources that the president's direction to expand processing capacity small independently owned operators have an opportunity to offer services is not just the big four packing facilities that have controlled the market for so very, very long. it is a continuation. a building on the foundation that has been set to the last three years. basically making sure we do a

good job to gary's point of a messaging to be able why this is important to them so we can avoid appropriation bills and we can avoid restricting our resources dedicated to this effort. or strengthen our case went and if any of our rules and regulations are challenged. >> thank you. it is worth noting prior to the executive order in our work together. to my knowledge antitrust division has never brought up te packers and stockyards before. and then few came along, the executive order can bluntly work together and have broken that seal. it's important going forward it's a tool to protect farmers. we can do a better job. we can do more. when i travel out of the country and speak with people is going

to understand better than farmers they live and breathe it. the havoc wreaked on their local communities with the tim banking or business or retail for it making sure we are preserving a vibrant economy but were all doing for the cook case we work collaborative together in the merger sent a very strong message. i think it will result in the bench much better market opportunity for farmers. >> i agree. i agree. it will be great to hear from you at the road ahead looks like. in light of the exceptional work you have done to establish a framework for leadership going

forward. >> the thing i want to address first is a concept called reciprocal switching. the congress but railroads have done since the beginning. that is handing off service one to the other. but what it really means in this context is where you have a shipper that is captive still served by one railroad. another railroad could serve if it could have access to the incumbent railroads tracks that go into the plant. and it used to be, 100 years ago railroads do this regularly. they consolidate that rose their monopoly power was much greater if they did not allow access to other railroads. it is a statute under certain circumstances of the arrangements where there is no

competition. 1985 our predecessor enacted a limiting how switching could be ordered which ended it. their bid note reciprocal switching orders in over 40 years. about 14 years ago the shipping organization petitioned our board to enact a rule to loosen this up. it is meant looked at, acted on, thought about for the last 14 years. i have made it my highest regulatory priority. we are nearing the end. i revised last september that will focus on providing reciprocal switching to shippers who can show the railroad serving them has fallen below certain preset metrics. on-time performance and metrics of that nature. it is impossible to run a large business if you can't know in

your raw materials are coming in or your finished product is coming out because you're waiting for the railroad. we have undertaken a tremendous amount of work already. cannot tell you what's going to be in it services fallen the preset standards. when they interact with each other for time and memorial been very, very restrictive. the board can explore under the rulemaking powers they are complex. it is my view going forward after get experience with reciprocal switching should be exploring other ways of providing was generally referred

to as competitive access. the other thing i want to focus on that's going to be really important for the economy in general but for our board in particular wall street pressure on railroads we have instituted to offset some of those pressures and service levels at higher standards are still there. last year activist investors forced out ceo of union pacific which is the largest world institute a well-known cross qatar who started last august as a ceo immediately began furloughing workers and cutting back on infrastructure spending. both of which are very much needed at the economy is going to grow. he's answering to the shareholders who put them in their. about two months ago was starting last fall it became public about two months ago another group is called an core hedge fund is launching a proxy battle to take over norfolk

southern one of the four major u.s. railroads wants to install they're not disguising it, cost cutters on the growth the current ceo is under fire because when he came into years ago he said were not going to do it this way anymore. we're going to keep eight resilient workforce board were going to invest in art railroad and expand. we will make more profit but be patient it will take time. wall street is saying we don't want to be patient. we can take profits on the river it immediately if you cut your workforce. these battles are going to keep going but i talked to gary why doesn't he do something about this? it is wall street. he said we have disclosed we don't regulate what they can do if they take control and of course that is right. those of the things were going to have to keep a close eye on going forward. there may be more hearings. more accountability. to the extent these continue and i'll say something about this in

my closing remarks. the country needs to grapple with this the railroad industry is too important for the economy. we cannot function without it. >> maybe want to talk a little bit about what the road ahead looks like for promoting competition using your work? quick so want to say something that captures all of our agencies. being pro- competition is not only pro- consumer and investor but it's pro-business. i think i can say this, we are all capitalist. yet finis is towards it's about the economics of network. it something the federal trade commission and all of us deal with them big tech companies ido secretary vilsack you deal with it. there's network effects. and obviously the monopoly tendency of railroads.

the work we are doing going forward we have been working very closely with the u.s. department of treasury and the federal reserve around the u.s. treasury market that's how we as a nation fund ourselves ensuring there's good competition there. part of it is not easy to explain it's the plumbing of the central market. we finished that rule last fall we've got to make sure he gets implemented over the next two years. i will help promote trading if everyone can come in and trade with each other there is more competition in that marketplace. also the road ahead for us is in the stock market. tens of millions of americans buy and sell stocks for their own well-being. though they are looking at it thinking they have zero

commission there is a lot of cost behind the scene. if you place a retail order today if you place was called a market order on a retail app today 90% chance it goes to a handful, three or four host sailors they are different than yours. it goes to three or four host sailors. it does not go to the lit stock market. how to ensure there is still competition on any given day a third to a half of our stock trading is not on the exchanges. it's called coal locally at the dark market. those are some of the bigger projects we are working on. work with our colleagues at treasury and the federal reserve to ensure this greater competition in the u.s. treasury market. and working in the equity markets. i will see if we lower the cost in either it helps companies as well.

it may not help the dealers in the middle. when i was on a wall street i was on wall street for 18 years there's a saying darkness is her friends. that is what we knew volatility was her friend as well. lack of competition was our friend the deal is in the middle it doesn't matter if you are a diamond dealer, an auto dealer a loan dealer or a stock deal or r you don't want competition. but competition is really good for the economy, for companies, for investors. >> jonathan, we are all using different technical terms. but in some ways with the sector or regulators are doing is very similar. it's looking and making switching easier where the are you are a consumer, whether you are an investor. it's making sure they're not gatekeeper abuses. >> that is the core of it.

we are all using different words for. we are all using different legal tools but this is what we're wee trying to do is create some consistency of a paradigm of what we are trying to achieve is a whole bunch of statutes old and need to do it. >> that is so true. this goes to the coherent and sophisticated approach to antitrust enforcement agencies we are thinking deeply about intermediaries. you said gatekeepers. how the gatekeeper power the intermediate power is stifling opportunity on different sides of the market that's increasingly something we are encountering our work across a wide range of industries including so many network industries. it really is a common theme coming up in a lot of what we are hearing today but with respect to competition, so true. we have an incredible assembly of international enforcers who

think about competition policy around the world. maybe you can talk a little bit to this audience about the experiences you have had with competition policy and think our protect elite residents for our colleagues abroad. >> this is a really wonderful opportunity to talk about where i have had the most interesting conversations with people like yourself, with lena, it is interesting. competition policy antitrust enforcement your jurisdiction is of the domestic market what's happening inside the domestic market. for trade policy we pick up at the border or the interaction between the domestic market and other international markets. what is interesting for me and the translating of concepts from your work trying to create

economic opportunity to our workdomestically connecting thao the global one of the really important highlights is with respect to consolidation monopolistic behavior it's not just companies that can exhibit this kind of behavior. but also countries. so that i think is informing a lot of our perspective in terms of addressing global economic distortion. whether it is the distortions of overcapacity and overproduction secretary yellin is talking about this week in the last couple of days in beijing. to the debate around state champions. state champions for some of our largest companies and

monopolists and oligopolistic often times the international trade conversation what they will say is we are having to compete against large company country, large in the large countries they are state champions we have to compete against. your best bet, united states is to get behind us can be your state champions. this is the way you should take on the international economic competition. i think the most important part of our work together and this connection between the international trade conversation and policy perspective and the more domestically focused pro competition economic policy conversation is state champions are no one's friends. state champions, no matter which estate is back in that particular champion is snuffing

out opportunities for the small's and mediums and everyone is going to be a part of that middle out bottom up approach. in terms of my message to enforcers from international jurisdictions, one of the ways in which we are considering changing the shape of international trade policy is to allow for international trade policy to preserve more space for antitrust enforcers to do your work within your jurisdiction. at the end of the day everything is connected. what we are trying to do both for ourselves and also in terms of international economic policy shift in perspective is to enable each other to create that middle out bottom up growth. >> that is so true.

where at the end of the day here domestically in the united states we are innovating we are at our best and we are creating opportunities we are at our best when the opportunity to compete and thrive as a business is spread throughout the country to all segments of our society regardless of where they reside or what industry they reside in. and so our national champions in a sense this and open competitive market that has room for everybody to compete and succeed it is such an important point. director i'm wondering if you have any observations you think are useful to share with our international enforcers? >> a very important case study in 2019 facebook had proposed creating a new currency, a libra. it was not the privacy regulate is not the antitrust enforcers

who were able to put it down. it was actually the central banks. it was other conduct enforcers and more. so the lesson there is so many of you are probably on a treadmill of a merger review and constant litigation. it is so important we all deepen our ties between the sector regulators and the enforcers. assistant ag cantor and i have formed a new agreement where we will be referring potentially criminal conduct that is more appropriate for them to deal with it. we have so much insight into some of the anticompetitive mischief that goes on to be able to share and be able to work together. i think deepening that collaboration is one. the second thing is i think here in the u.s. we have over the past few years i've taken a dramatic turn from thinking

about markets through economic textbooks and more toward financial reality. when you look at some of the old ways of analysis we were suffering quite a bit in the u.s. on private equity roll ups in the healthcare space. lots of different types of financial instrumentation throughout sectors of the economy and it did not compute for antitrust agencies. now i'm seeing a fundamental shift to look at real-world real worldfinancial experiencesd experience of workers. the analytical shift has really made a big difference. and finally i just want to share digital markets are really lurching and digital concentration lurching into so much. including agriculture, financial

markets share gensler talks about extreme concentration service providers received in so many sectors. i think tackling ai, tackling all of this concentration is not just one set of tools, it is all of these tools. as i reflect the cfpb published a report about the future of payments and talked about apple and google's regulation. we have now seen the united states file a complaint addressing some of the same issues. all of us seem to think about the various tools we have and have a real agenda of promoting competition using rules and enforcement together. >> i would like all of our panels to spend a few moments sharing any final observations or thoughts. >> i was prepared to talk a little bit about a particular case we were engaged in.

but listening to the panel discussion i'm going to go in a much different direction. what i would add to this conversation is all of this is raised in awareness on the part of ordinary americans. they are now more sensitive on the issues because of the collective work of the various agencies in the example i would give. i had a friend of mine who decided to go to ncaa tournament in omaha decided to get some tickets on ticketmaster. the tickets were quite expensive 400 some dollars to see the games. he did not have any problem having spent 400 bucks for the ticket. he could not quite understand the service charge of 140 bucks was from ticketmaster. i could not answer that question because it wasn't agriculture related. but it occurred to me this a more informed consumer. as we seek more informed farmers. as we see more informed investors, as we see more

informed folks in export dealing with railroads i think we are going to see a ground swell of continued support for the actions that we talked about here this morning. >> absolutely. well said. professor tai. click so many of the competitions reminds me what is old is new again. a lot of what we are doing and advancing president biden's vision is to take another crack at president roosevelt, fdr's vision. in those years after world war ii which were so critical to the shaping of today's world order. economic and otherwise.

provision has led us down a path where we have seen that race to the bottom and has led us to this particular point. pointing out really profoundly that the world we live in right now is one of multiple inflection points. i think with all of the anxiety

that comes with the uncertainty there is more hope in reimagining our order. >> secretary vilsack mentioned yesterday and today we have two major college basketball championships so lots of people, whether you like it or not are betting on it and i was just reflecting six or seven years ago the two major platforms proposed to merge and you think to yourself it was so egregiously illegal but there was the sense you could get away with it. there was no sense of deterrence. boardrooms were computed in and they just perceived nothing

would happen and maybe occasionally they would get stopped. we now think about detouring from the start and you are seeing a lot of the worst abuses in banking i think we are deterring that because we don't have the resources to constantly go after crime. now they are sanctions and we are being clear about what happens particularly when it comes to repeat offenders we are changing the way we are doing business. it's not just a monetary sign. when you hear these messages from across the government.

it speaks to the importance of this policy and volumes to the wrongdoers. >> it's hard to compete. i said i had a remarkable message with policy and political actors but to connect i think it might be a 25% charge that you can pass on to your friend. [laughter] but when i think of finance, i think of it like an hourglass. there's people that have money, need money and are willing to bear the risk into the financial market is at the neck of the hourglass and wind literally trillions of dollars are flowing through the hourglass on any given day of risk and money if

you are a gatekeeper you want to be right at that chokepoint which is probably what this ticketmaster would take or the betting parlors that are not electronic. by the way the original security goals were completing with state gaming laws for the reason. it started with an executive order with the council but convening us. i learned a lot on this panel we learned a lot i had to disappoint marty we couldn't quite help them stop a proxy

battle. we are not investor neutral or competition neutral and we are going to continue to lean in and events like this remind me of that. >> on behalf of the department of justice and federal trade commission i want to thank this extraordinary group and the nation's leaders hearing directly from the sources and hearing directly from them as to why competition policy is so important to the work we do. thank you again on behalf of both of our agencies. [applause]