Robert Reich writes:

[T]he administration should be using the threat of antitrust enforcement to force corporations in concentrated industries to lower their prices.

Biden’s trust-busters — Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department — have been doing excellent work but they need to do more targeting and threatening. This is the direction Kamala Harris wants to go.

Since the 1980s, after the federal government all but abandoned antitrust, two-thirds of all American industries have consolidated into a handful of giant corporations.

When four or fewer firms dominate an industry, it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases and prevent price cuts — which is exactly what’s been happening.

Last week, Kamala Harris announced she would go after corporate price gouging. Trump promptly accused her of seeking price controls. Much of the economic establishment — which justifiably believes price controls don’t work — went berserk.

But Harris is not advocating price controls. She’s advocating just the opposite (see my interview, below).

The entities now controlling prices are big corporations. She wants to prevent them from keeping prices high by restoring competition. She’s exactly right.