Gail Slater was named last week as President-Elect Donald J. Trump (R) pick to be the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. “Great pick by @realDonaldTrump,” said Andy Yen. “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.” Andrew Ferguson echoed that endorsement last week, as is shown in the screen capture below. Ferguson has since been named to head up the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to replace Biden-Harris pick Lina Khan. Ferguson posted on 12.10.2024 the following. “Thank you President Trump. Under your leadership, American businesses will become stronger and more competitive, and will better serve workers and consumers, than ever before. I’m honored that you’ve chosen me to be FTC Chairman in your mission to make our country great again.” So, if “people are policy” there are now some early clues as to what a Trump 2.0 Administration may look like. It is worth noting that Slater worked with Senator J.D. Vance (OH-R), the Vice President-Elect as his antitrust advisor. It is with that backdrop that MHProNews will consider the fascinating remarks by left-leaning but antitrust advocate Matt Stoller. Stoller said last June and restated more recently his evidence-based view that ‘Economic Termites are Everywhere,’ which MHProNews previously reported at this link here. As this news analysis will lay out, Stoller and other antitrust advocates, personalities, and media could be significant for manufactured housing on several levels. This is a fact and evidence-based look that those in the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) orbit are unlikely to publish a mention, much less candidly report on in depth. Given that manufactured home prices have soared in the past 4 years and manufactured home land-lease community (MHCs) pad costs have risen sharply too, the role of possible antitrust violations on that picture merit authentic consideration.
In “Monopoly Round-Up: Trump Lays Out His Antitrust Agenda,” Matt Stoller said on 12.8.2024 in an email to MHProNews: “That’s probably what’s going to happen. There will be exceptions, and the Trump administration will still be much better on antitrust than Clinton, Bush, or Obama, in many ways because we revived the philosophy behind the law. But elections have consequences. And Trump will make sure his people, whoever he picks, enact his policy.” Trump said via Truth Social that “Andrew [Ferguson] has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country.”
Obviously, inflation caused during the spending spree launched in Biden-Harris (D) and Democratic Congressional leadership of the past almost 4 years. There is no doubt that inflation was real and arguably understated in nearly the past 4 years. Nor should that be a matter of debate, as then House Majority Whip James “Jim” Clyburn (SC-D) said on left-leaning MSNBC that Democrats knew that their action would cause inflation. MHProNews reported that at the time and has periodically reminded readers of that since then. Clyburn’s remarks are on video, which he (of course) defended as a good thing in the view of his party. As a disclosure for new readers, the management and this writer for MHProNews are political independents that supported Trump and the America First agenda in 2016, 2020, and 2024. That said, it is a fair question to ask, beyond inflation fueled by Biden-Harris-Democratic spending in the past roughly 4 years, are there aspects of the economy which has witnessed prices higher than they might otherwise be in the absence of the effects of monopoly power?
Part I – Insights from Antitrust Advocate Matt Stoller
1)
There’s been a lot of monopoly-related events this week, everything from follow-up on the UnitedHealth Care CEO killing to a major court decision on the TikTok ban to a sneaky provision in the defense bill that lets monopolists harm our defense base.
As usual, I’ll highlight something I think is particularly important, in this case Trump is beginning to lay out his antitrust agenda. He appointed a woman named Gail Slater to head his Antitrust Division, and made public comments attacking pharmacy benefit managers.
2) Left-leaning Stoller said the following.
Make America Competitive Again
Donald Trump’s antitrust agenda came into focus this week, and while it won’t be like Joe Biden’s, it seems he is going to continue some significant parts of the anti-monopoly revival. Specifically, it’s likely the second Trump administration will keep Google and the rest of big tech on the hot seat, and address pharmaceutical middlemen.
3) Note that Stoller makes a similar point that MHProNews recently did. Namely, that it was during Trump’s term in office that the Google and other antitrust cases were brought.
Donald Trump announced on TruthSocial that he would be nominating Gail Slater as his Antitrust Division chief. “Big Tech has run wild for years,” he said in announcing Slater, “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” Trump also noted that he had brought the first cases against big tech in his first term, and was proud of doing so. This statement, as much as the appointment, lays out what Trump expects from his antitrust regime.
4) Stoller continued.
Then a few days later, Trump went on Meet the Press and discussed a meeting he had with some of his top aides – like RFK Jr. – and pharmaceutical executives. Pharmacy benefit managers, a widely hated set of actors on the right – came up. “We’re going to reduce prices because the middleman makes more money than the drug companies,” he said. “There’s a middleman that nobody even knows who they are. And you look at our drug prices, they’re much higher than the prices for the same medicine, for the same stuff. So we met. And we were — we met for a long time. And we talked about pricing.”
So what does the Slater appointment, and these comments, mean? Whoever took over at the Antitrust Division would have inherited monopolization cases against Google, Apple, Ticketmaster, Visa, and RealPage, as well as an unusually aggressive merger program, and broad investigations into UnitedHealth Group, seed monopolists, Nvidia, and a whole set of other corporations.
5) While each of those are significant, MHProNews will spotlight the RealPage case, because in some ways it has similarities to the national civil antitrust actions brought on behalf of residents of several manufactured home community (MHC) operators that routinely happen to be members of the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) and/or members of an MHI linked state association affiliate. While some will like it, and others not, the RealPage and Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) owned Datacomp are sobering realities.
6) With that in mind, Stoller said this.
The risk was that these cases would be settled on the cheap and the investigations shut down. The Slater pick makes that less likely; she’s a competent, creative, and enforcement minded lawyer, with a background at Fox, Roku, and in the Federal Trade Commission. Right now, she’s on the staff of Senator J.D. Vance, and likely shares his economically populist views, most notably his belief that big tech is too powerful and needs to be broken up. I’m guessing that tech lobbyists are pretty unhappy.
7) As MHProNews reported last summer, the Google decision ought to cause general counsels in and beyond MHVille to sit up and take notice. As important as Google and others involved in Big Tech are on information bias, censorship, and related issues, it is also noteworthy on its own right as signals of changes in antitrust. Readers take note, because again based on years of history, MHI linked media entities are unlikely to mention such facts and evidence. But failure to report doesn’t mean that they are correct, it simply means that they are hiding information that arguably ought to be presented to the industry, its professionals, advocates, consumers, public officials, researchers and other interested parties.
8) While Stoller makes some interesting observations, his apparent Democratic bias may cloud some of his insights. Based on past experience, it is unlikely that Stoller will mention the possibility that paltering and posturing may have played a role in some Biden-Harris (D) era antitrust and competition law related statements. It should be obvious that backers of Biden, and then Harris, were often the same ones that ought to have been the targets of federal antitrust action. That said, to his credit, Stoller mentioned during the campaign that Kamala Harris was getting public pushes by major donors to get rid of FTC Chair Lina Khan.
9) Liberal-minded Glenn Greenwald put it like this. Greenwald, it should be recalled, has said that there should be a new paradigm in mind when looking at politics and economics, which he said should be viewed through the lens of pro-establishment and anti-establishment. The routinely insightful Greenwald has a point.
10) Be that as it may, Stoller correctly pointed out that the Harris campaign was taking big donations from those who wanted Khan and Jonathan Kanter out. Detail-minded MHProNews readers will recall that Kanter said earlier this year that monopoly is a kitchen table issue and that those who tout moats are apparent concerns for antitrust enforcement.
11) The Biden Harris (D) era Fact Sheet on Competition, previously referenced numerous times by MHProNews, used what some might describe as a propaganda sandwich technique. Some true information is presented, and then some propaganda is sandwiched or mixed in with it. By using a mix of the true and untrue, the trusting may be more likely to accept the entire pitch less critically. It is, in other words, a type of spin, paltering, propaganda, etc. This is part of what makes spotting antitrust violations more difficult, because news sources may not connect the dots that are needed by readers to grasp what is occurring. The more factual segment of the Biden-Harris (D) era antitrust statement is posted in the screen capture below.
12) Perhaps akin to Stoller, the left-leaning The American Prospect (TAP) article by Luke Goldstein made a similar glitch in its analysis of the enforcement of antitrust and competition law.
13) What some appear to be missing with some antitrust voices on the left is what apparent leftist and nearly lifelong Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (a.k.a.: RFK Jr., Bobby Kennedy Jr. etc. has done roughly the last 18 months. Kennedy has been sounding the alarm on corporate power, often with his focus on health-related issues. Kennedy dared challenge Biden and the Democratic leadership when he announced his run for president in April 2023. Kennedy aptly and bluntly said that his candidacy was about ending the corrupt merger of state and corporate power threatening a new feudalism in the U.S.
The Democratic Party has absolutely moved further left, but that may not be the biggest story. The Democratic Party embraced the corporate and billionaire class that it is, borrowing Kennedy’s phrase, threatening the U.S. with a new feudalism. But the Democratic Party continues to posture its support for Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, while essentially working against the interests of ‘the common man (or woman)’ precisely because they are working subtly maintain the power of many billionaires and corporates interests. Kennedy and Greenwald are liberals, not conservatives. Yet, they have at times de facto or in fact embraced the stance advanced by Trump and now his VP-Elect, J.D. Vance. The censorship, the economic harm caused by open-borders and runaway corporate power for the working and middle class has openly and/or slyly been advanced by Democrats and their backers.
14) But perhaps also missing are insights from the political center-right.
Voices on the center-right such as Hanne Nabintu Herland and Justin Haskins with the Heartland Institute have been pointing out facts that have echoes of observations that may be raised, but are perhaps misunderstood, but some on the left.
15) The irony is that what Stoller aptly called “economic termites” is predicated on an abuse of big corporate, big media, and big tech power often in concert with Democrats and RINO, or more aptly, Establishment Republicans. As was noted above, Greenwald has a point. We are more in an era of a choice between Anti-Establishment or Pro-Establishment. A good self-check: where are you in that decision?
16) It is useful to keep in mind that Kennedy and Trump were both the target of big tech censorship. Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat at the time, was being targeted because he wasn’t walking ‘The Party’ line in perfect lockstep. Kennedy was pointing out problems with corporate links in the realm of government regulators and health. Trump was directly going after the corruption in the so-called Bush Wing of the Republican Party, which is to say the ‘Establishment Wing of the Republican Party’ PLUS the Democrats who had been coopted by the Establishment or ‘blob.’ Trump was a Democrat supporter who became a Republican candidate who became president.
17) Kennedy and Trump made a deal in the later parts of the 2024 campaign, which it appears that both are intending to honor. Trump’s image is in the minds of too many tainted by years of the Smear and Big Lie. Instead of looking at reputation, which can easily be tarnished by big media and big tech, look at the facts and evidence objectively.
18) Stoller and TAP’s Luke Goldstein should dive into articles like the one below by various Federal Reserve system linked co-researchers, Elena Falcettoni-James A. Schmitz Jr-Mark L. J. Wright on the fascinating and relevant subject of ‘sabotage monopoly’ tactics.
19) These are elements of American realities that Trump 2.0 is living as they are about to take office and face a phalanx of confirmation, media, and ‘deep state’ sabotage tactics.
20) How Trump and the “MAGA” movement fare in their battle against “the Blob,” “Deep State,” or regulatory state remains to be seen. Trump is promising to cut back on regulations in dramatic fashion.
I was working in finance during Obama.
Obama’s economy grew VERY SLOWLY (under 2%).
Trump’s economy grew at nearly 2X THE PACE, wages adjusted for inflation were up, & the wealth gap was closing.
Why?
Successful tax-cuts.
Successful regulation-cuts.
Successful energy policy. pic.twitter.com/hCt7iago2L— Byron Donalds (@ByronDonalds) October 13, 2024
Not an unrelated flashback…
THIS IS HUGE! 🤩
Trump Announces his Plan to Cut the Cost of Purchasing a New Home by HALF! — He will Also Prohibit Illegal Aliens from Receiving Mortgages
• regulations alone are 30% of THE cost of a new home, passed to the homebuyer.
—— this will be GONE!
—— AGAIN, I… pic.twitter.com/TBuMdBy6T8— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) September 5, 2024
…because one of the causes of high housing costs are federal, state, and local regulations.
Or as HUD’s own researchers, Pamela Blumenthal and Regina Gray phrased it as follows.
The regulatory environment — federal, state, and local — that contributes to the extensive mismatch between supply and need has worsened over time. Federally sponsored commissions, task forces, and councils under both Democratic and Republican administrations have examined the effects of land use regulations on affordable housing for more than 50 years. Numerous studies find land use regulations that limit the number of new units that can be built or impose significant costs on development through fees and long approval processes drive up housing costs. Research indicates higher housing costs also drive up program costs for federal assistance, reducing the funds available to serve additional households.
21) The headline included the question: “Why are Manufactured Home Prices and Pad Prices Skyrocketing?” There are reasons to think that consolidation is driving prices higher on manufactured homes and on the properties, and thus the land-leases, paid by manufactured home consumers and community residents. There is generic evidence that spans the left-right divide that would cause that thought to occur for thinking people. There are also reasons why people on either side of the left-right divide might consider what Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk and Trump did a few months ago, and with apparently successful – at least in terms of the 2024 election – effect. Musk called himself a moderate Democrat. RFK Jr. was a lifelong Democrat. Tulsi Gabbard, an ex-Democrat who embraced the MAGA agenda as being better for the U.S. than what her former party affiliation’s agenda offered. It is the old ex-Democrat turned Republican Ronald Reagan adage; my 80 percent friend is not my twenty percent enemy. A similar argument could be made for the 70 percent or 65 percent friend is not a 30 or 35 percent enemy. There is common ground on issues that include antitrust or monopoly-law enforcement, and that common ground would be good for the majority of Americans and might prove annoying for sly proclaimers of class warfare.
22) “Economic termites,” ‘sabotage monopoly’ tactics and the Warren Buffett ally William “Bill” Gates III fascinating “parasitic” observations are arguably complimentary views. It also fits with the thesis advanced by Robin Harding, who pointed out that Buffett’s definition of a good business is one that doesn’t have effective competitors. These and other items may fit like pieces of a jig saw puzzle neatly together when they are properly understood. Perhaps as important for advocates of manufactured housing, those various remarks and observations apply directly to the manufactured home industry.
23) Perhaps one of the most important insights in the 21st century on what has gone wrong with what used to be called the American way was uttered by Danny Glover, who served on a Warren Buffett nonprofit board and made the following remark as part of the award-winning Shadows of Liberty. “It’s not only a monopoly of wealth; it’s a monopoly of information as well.” The combination of capital and information access can cause a lack of a level playing field in business as well as a lack of clarity or a blurring of reality. That too points toward “economic termites,” or Gates’ “parasitic” insight.
![DidntWantToMeetWarren[Buffett]BecauseGuyBuysSellsFoundImperfectMarketNotValueAddSocietyZeroSumGameParasiticBillGatesPhotoMicrosoftLogoGatesFoundationLogoQuoteQuotableQuoteMHproNews](http://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/DidntWantToMeetWarrenBuffettBecauseGuyBuysSellsFoundImperfectMarketNotValueAddSocietyZeroSumGameParasiticBillGatesPhotoMicrosoftLogoGatesFoundationLogoQuoteQuotableQuoteMHproNews.jpg)
- HousingWire recently noted that: “The study from LendingTree found that the average price of a new manufactured home sold in the U.S. increased by 58.34% between 2018 and 2023.”
- In an item MHProNews plans to unpack in the days ahead, CoStar said this: “The price per unit nationally has shot up from $64,296 in the fourth quarter of 2023 to $138,125 per unit so far this quarter, according to CoStar data.”
- The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) said the: “data show[s] that manufactured housing is a foundation in the structure of American housing. It supports some of the most precarious members of our society.” But PESP reports sharp site fee hikes that often widely exceed the supposed Biden-Harris era rate of inflation in the U.S.
25) There is only one pair of trade media in MHVille that have invested the time, effort, and energy needed to bring these various facts together and make the case that sabotage monopoly efforts have apparently been harming the industry in conjunction with an improper enforcement of existing federal laws. Antitrust and consumer law advocate Samuel “Sam” Strommen made that case in his 17-page thesis for Knudson Law with over 130 footnotes. There is an evidence-based case to be made that a combination of “inflation” and purported antitrust violations have driven manufactured housing costs higher than they otherwise would be absent those forces. When the facts and terminology from the various sources are laid out, a picture emerges that in several respects often compliments each other’s arguments. See the linked and related reports to learn more.
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By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
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