Blame America: Is Canada using Trump as an excuse to avoid acting on oligopolies?

Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President just over a year ago threw a real wrench into the growing worldwide movement against corporate power and concentration. If the headlines around a series of recent legal defeats are to be believed, that momentum – at least in the United States – has stalled, if not reversed. Certainly, Netflix’s just-announced $72 billion (U.S.) takeover of Warner Bros. isn’t helping with the narrative. After all, such deals simply aren’t brought forward in an environment that is frosty to mega-mergers.In Canada, the movement has been subsumed by the bigger issue of the trade war and Trump’s repeated threats of annexation, serious or not. These dangers fester near the top of the public and government consciousness, but the concentration problem and the unaffordability crisis it’s driving continues to bubble just underneath.Matt Stoller, research director at the non-profit American Economic Liberties Project advocacy group, has a different view. He doesn’t believe the antitrust and anti-corporate power movement in the United States is in as bad shape as it’s being made out to be. And he believes that Canada and other countries are using the U.S. situation as an excuse to avoid dealing with their own problems.He joins the Do Not Pass Go podcast to discuss Netflix’s big move and what Trump’s impossible-to-predict policy on monopolies mean to the rest of the world.Check out his Substack newsletter BIG here, and his Organized Money podcast here.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe