(bright upbeat music) - [Announcer] And now, Crosscut Festival Main Stage, featuring a selection of curated sessions from this year's Crosscut Festival.

Thank you for joining us for "Is Anti-trust the Answer?"

with Amy Klobuchar moderated by Mary Harris.

We would like to thank our keynote track sponsor, BECU.

We'd also like to thank our founding sponsor the Kerry & Linda Killinger Foundation.

- Hi, everyone, I'm Mary Harris, Welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

I wanna introduce myself and my guest, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and I will start with me.

I host Slate's daily news podcast, What next, so when you are getting push alerts, feeling overwhelmed by the news, you can just download my show each morning, we'll explain all the context analysis you need to understand what's happening.

And we've been doing this for three years or so, which means that we've covered everything from a presidential election, a midterm election, two impeachments, a pandemic, so much.

And part of what's interesting to me about Senator Amy Klobuchar is you look at all of those stories and really she's right there, she's there passing legislation, she's there running for president, so it's part of what I'm excited to talk to her today.

She's been in Washington a really long time, she actually came as an intern for Walter Mondale, she even wrote a beautiful remembrance of him in the New York Times when he passed away last month, and she talked about how when she came to Washington, she of course expected to be writing policy but instead was keeping inventory of the vice-presidents furniture, but of course, now she's doing much more than putting sofas on spreadsheets.

What she's really interested in talking about now is anti-trust, which means basically waking up big companies the big companies that are all over our life, whether you're talking about big tech or anything else, so I'm really excited to welcome Senator Amy Klobuchar to the show.

- Well, thanks for having me on Mary.

- So let's start with your book, the book's called "Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age."

It's all about corporate bigness which I feel like is a huge story right now because people are feeling this in their everyday life, whether you're talking about your phone, and Amazon, and digital companies that just seem ubiquitous, or whether you're talking about your own personal life the way that, for instance, I'm a journalist, I feel like I can see how corporations are coming in, taking over smaller operations and it's impacting me directly.

So you've really taken on the project of looking at how antitrust, the idea of bursting monopoly power is woven into the American project.

You've looked at the history, so I wanna start there, I want you to just tell me the most surprising story someone would read if they opened up your book.

- Well, there's sort of amazing stories like that it was truly a woman who hated monopolies that started the game Monopoly, Lizzie Magie, that's why she started it, never got credit for it, or the muckrakers that took on Standard Oil, there's some pretty incredible stories of people that just persevered to tell the truth, but for me, I'd say the most amazing thing was how I got involved in this to begin with, and that was something, I was a brand new Senator, didn't have a lot of clout, the junior Senator from Minnesota, and I got a call from a pharmacist at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, and he said, this is crazy, this heart drug that's really important that treats newborn babies with heart defects has gone from about $80 some per treatment to $1,600 per treatment, and this is just an outrage and the parents can't afford it.

So I start looking into it, we're told by the company that bought the drug, oh, it was moving expenses, what?

So then I talked to the head of the hospital, found out it was this huge deal nationally, one company had bought both drugs, the only drugs that treated this heart defect, and it was the best treatment, the only two drugs and both prices got jacked up, ends up the FTC takes it on, and despite the amazing facts in the case, it gets thrown out because of conservative court rulings.

So that's when I thought to myself, okay, if a US Senator, and the FTC, and a bunch of med parents, and a bunch of med nurses and doctors, and all these attorney generals across the country can't take on and win a case about a heart defect drug for newborn babies, we've got a major monopoly problem.

And that's when I started looking at all this consolidation all across the economy like, you think you're getting deals on online travel, it's only two companies that own 90% of the market, or you think that, you know, well, this one's pretty obvious, cable rates have gone up and up and up over the years, these are monopolies and they get to do what they want.

- It's interesting hearing you talk because you're talking about such disparate industries, everything from healthcare to big tech, so much in between, how do you create legislation that's going to touch on all those things and make sure each of those industries doesn't get too big.

- Well, you really go back to the original Sherman Act and the laws in this country because they covered everything.

There were some exemptions to them, but they covered the economy as a whole, and what happened over the years is courts started interpreting them in this really narrow way which they didn't use to do when they broke up AT & T or the Gilded Age, when they broke up Standard Oil, or the Northern Trust, the first case Teddy Roosevelt successfully brought, but now they are really, really limited in how they interpret that.

So what that leads me to believe is we need to update the laws we have now to make it easier to bring these cases, something we change over time, we've made changes to the laws to respond to a more sophisticated economy over time, but just not in the last few decades.

And then the other thing about it is yes, you can do specific things, that's a great question for different industries, right?

You could look at like app stores and you could have some rules of the road set into law, or you could do something for the fact that newspapers and news producers can't get any good deal on getting paid for content, and give them an exemption so they can work together to do it, and that really is about the tech industry.

You can put in place privacy rules that we don't seem to be able to produce out of the capitalistic system in part because the big guys have bought all the little guys like Instagram and WhatsApp, that might've been able to compete with them eventually, that's the Facebook story where Mark Zuckerberg once sent an email, I'd rather buy than compete.

So that is part of the issue, you can do industry ride things which I think you need to do to really get at the root of this problem, some changes to law, but you can also do specific things by industry, especially with pharma, you can do some things about pay for delay that they can't pay off companies to keep their products off market, that's a real thing, generics get paid by the existing companies that you could have more competition by allowing for less expensive drugs that are saved from other countries, there's all kinds of things you could do outside of the antitrust laws in certain areas which together form a competition policy that's better for consumers.

- What's interesting about your book is that you talk a little bit about how changes in antitrust have been made in history, and for instance, you talk about the Granger movement, a movement of farmers from the late 1800s to really resist monopoly power, and when I was reading about that, I just thought I don't see anything like that today which is a populist movement that's really seeing all of these changes and trying to respond to them because so many of the changes impact consumers in a positive way.

You think about Amazon, if you're an Amazon Prime member, you're getting stuff quickly, you're getting stuff free, it's right at your door, so do you think about that?

About how you get consumers interested in what is their best interest, but what might not be obvious to them immediately?

- Oh, that's why I wrote the book 'cause I wanna make the case, I don't want to punish success, I was in the private sector for 14 years myself, and it is true that they've given us some incredible innovations, we don't want those innovations to go away, but it doesn't mean at some point that a company becomes too big and so big that they have basically pushed out other competitors that eventually won't be good for a competitive marketplace.

And economics have shown that Adam Smith, the father of capitalism warned about the standing army of monopolies that you had to watch out for them, they influence the political process too much, you wonder why we don't have privacy laws in place?

Well, they had so much clout that they were able to stop them on the federal basis 'cause they didn't like them, or you wonder why we don't have even for paid political ads, where there aren't disclaimers and disclosures when it comes to social media?

There's just many, many things where you go through you realize monopolies have a lot of power, so that's why I think you've got to take it on in a very different way.

Again, with the intent of allowing for break offs of companies, not destroying the companies, we don't want them destroyed, but you may want to, as has happened through history, push them to divest some of their assets, parts of their company, or where it is particularly monopoly situation.

- But it's like, I look at healthcare costs, for instance, like the cost of insulin, and people recognize that's a problem for so long and nothing's been done, so what's different now?

- Well, the people are mad, they're getting madder and madder, the polls show it about consolidation, they are more and more feeling like their lives is not in their own control because you've got, you know, companies that are controlling basically their own data and seeing them as profit centers, and out of that, when you look as you pointed out in the past with the farmers, and by the way, I would add, union movement from across the country which is still happening today, you got some new policies in place.

And so, I wrote the book 'cause I want people to just step back and think about where we are right now, and that you can still have all these great new developments, and you can still demand that your government do something, and that might be by the way, in the form of making sure that agencies are funded so that they can take on the big cases, like we're seeing right now, making sure as we've seen with some of the appointees that president Biden has made like Lina Khan for the FTC, who's a very out of the box thinker and aggressive on antitrust issues to make sure that you've got some people in place that can do the work, and then of course demanding that your elected officials take this on.

And I sure need people bringing it up at Zoom calls and town hall meetings 'cause it's very easy to stop this stuff because you'll always find a representative that's close to a company.

There's a big cartoon, a famous cartoon that I have in the wall of my office, and I have over a hundred cartoons in this book, I like cartoons, but it showed all the big trusts, the steel trust, the oil trust sitting over these big balloon figures looking down at the little US senators at their desk, and I have that up the wall because it kind of reminds me of what's happening today.

And the only way we get through it, and believe me, we have through history, there's no reason to believe that we can't, again, that's by people actually demanding some change.

- I wonder if you see antitrust as a place where you might find common ground with senators across the aisle, or whether it's just getting too difficult in the week of January 6th, like, I know that you've been outspoken about for instance, filibuster reform, and being able to really just pass things through, and I wonder if that's partially because there's some frustration on your part, that having the conversations, the honest broker conversations you wanna have may not be as possible right now?

- There are many Republicans that are interested in this and some are also out there on it but it's not like Senator Grassley, you doing this bill with me to change the way the fees are structured to add a bunch of money to the agency so that they can actually take on the cases, and some just say it more quietly in the Senate floor that they mad about consolidating in a certain industry, and that farmers are upset or something like that.

And so, I need to galvanize that, I have a big sweeping bill, but, you know, I don't have a monopoly and ideas, that was a really bad antitrust joke, so, you know, you can divide that bill upright and we already have pieces of it that are bipartisan, David Cicilline who led those incredible House hearings into tech, they are working with me on some of my bills and I'll work with them on some their bills, and so, we're just focused on getting something done and passed, and into those really three categories, hoping the agencies get funding, that's number one 'cause we have to do it right away, number two- - That's for FTC and DOJ.

- Hmm?

- That's for FTC and the DOJ.

- Right, exactly, and then number two, looking at changes in the laws for standards, for merges going forward, but you're not gonna fix everything by just doing that, so the third thing is looking backwards at some of these merges and industries that are too consolidated, and that ranges from having the FTC collect data again, which they stopped doing, and how consolidated industries were continuing on the law suits that were already started, and then changing some of the standards in the law so it's easier to look at what we call exclusionary conduct.

And then the oversight, I thought we just had an incredible hearing on the app stores with Apple and Google, where we had companies as different as Spotify, Tile and Match.com testify about their experiences where they're basically paying up to 30% to Apple or Google to have an app on their app store when in fact the app stores are kind of the new Internet, there's still the web based sites, but I think everyone knows that a lot of people get stuff on apps, in fact, the average American spends four hours a day on apps.

And so what Apple and Google does in their own spheres, they charge 30% to some of these companies, they have a rule that you cannot even tell your customers that they can get a better deal on your own website, so there's all kinds of problems with how that's structured, I just used that as an example 'cause you could do particular legislation about that in addition to the sweeping legislation.

- But it sounds like you're willing to go slow if you have to, because this is meaningful to you- - I'm not slow, I'm willing to break it up, you know, I'm willing to do it in parts, I just, I would like to do a big bill, but whatever we can, we can't, newspapers can't wait much longer to be able to get compensated for their content 'cause they're going, you know, so many of them are going away, or people are being laid off.

You really can't wait much longer to do something about privacy rules, and about the way a lot of these companies are dominating different gateways, you got to act now.

- I wanna ask about one more thing, which is, that we are all still processing the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial and what happened there, and in the days since, of course, there have been more shootings, this is in your State, so I wanna talk to you a little bit about it and what the verdict means to you because you've been deeply involved in the justice system in Minnesota and how it works, and one of the things that I've been impressed with with you, is that you've said that your approach to police and how to reform police, your ideas have changed, and I'm wondering if you can explain a little bit how that change happened, and even what you would tell a younger version of yourself about what you are now.

- Sure, well, when you have those jobs as I did many years ago, you know, you're doing the cases in front of you, and you, I know so many people in my office tried to be fair in warfare with sentencing and those kinds of things, but after a while, when you step back, you see this systemic racism in the system, you see it in who are stopped by the police, remember the cases, we didn't do misdemeanor cases, we did felonies, but the cases come to you and you make a decision on each case.

But maybe as we've now learned, for instance, from the Daunte Wright case, we know now that it's two to one African-Americans killed at traffic stops over white Americans, and those kinds of things mean that you have to look at the system as a whole, you've got to look at how the grand juries work, something that's changed over time which I support since I was there, that individual prosecutors are making decisions.

You've got to be willing which we did to do DNA reviews and be open to looking back at cases with conviction, integrity unit, something relatively new that I support, and I asked Merrick Garland about it is hearing, I really wanna see those.

And then of course the subject here, police reform, this means everything from banning chokeholds to making sure there's accountability for officers, it was a redemptive moment when that jury came back there is no doubt about that, and I was so proud of my friend Keith Ellison and his team that took on the case, and I was equally proud of the regular people that didn't run away, they stayed there and they held this burden on their shoulders for so long in which they felt guilty, which is absurd, they felt guilty that they couldn't do more, and they would cry and talk about that at the hearing, when you know that the person that did this was the one on trial, Derek Chauvin, who was ultimately convicted, but it's on all of us, not these individual citizens that happened to be standing on the corner or were there when Daunte Wright was stopped and shot simply because he had an expired license tab, it's on all of us as lawmakers and leaders to do something.

So that's why I'm such a strong supporter of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act about changing some of these standards so we look at this differently, and about respecting, there are a lot of law enforcement including those guarding the Capitol on January 6th that work hard every day, that put themselves at great risk and they deserve to have a fair system too, and they deserve not to be brought down by some of the behavior that we're seeing from people like Derek Chauvin.

- I mean, you declined to prosecute some police while you were the prosecutor in Hennepin County, looking back, do you think, I might have done that differently?

- Well, those were cases, we took every case back then which was really the model across the country, honestly, and brought it to the grand jury and presented the facts, and we did that with every case, and the grand jury, as you've seen across the country, I didn't bring charges, and so at the time it was viewed, that was the best way to do it 'cause you were taking politics out of it.

And quite a while ago, I came out saying, you know what, it's right to make those decisions yourself, so that'd be the first change, but the second is you gotta change the standards and to go from what it is now, and that's what the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act does, from reasonable force to necessary force, and that really would change behavior.

- I want to touch about one more thing, which is life in Washington, post Trump, and how just your conversations in the hallway have changed, have they?

Like, does it feel different, like a weight off your shoulders?

- Well, the first thing that's different is you can wake up on Saturday and Sunday morning and not worry about a mean tweet from the president of the United States, not necessarily about yourself, but about your constituents, or getting everyone just worked out.

He would literally deliberately do things on Saturdays and Fridays to try to basically disrupt everything, I think that was a lot of his M.O., so that's good that that's gone and we can get back to governing, which is by the way, hard enough.

I think the second thing is that people now just have higher expectations, there is a feeling as the spring is here that while we're still dealing with the pandemic in a big way, that we have people in charge, not just the president and the vice-president, but really a Cabinet in charge that get up every morning to do the right thing, and they're trying their best to get those vaccines out, and that allows you to say, okay, I heard someone say the other day, who is a young person, I don't have to lay in bed at night thinking, how do I manage our government, what do I do?

Because you know that's happening but still no, what's still there is we know things aren't still right, we have to do more when it comes to childcare, we've learned that during the pandemic that to do something about immigration reform, it's crying out for change, climate change, and so, I think it gives us this moment to say, okay, we're gonna get through this, but now we have to take on these bigger challenges, and by the way, one of them not to circle back, but one of them is competition policy and antitrust.

- Senator Klobuchar, thank you so much for joining me here today.

- I was great be on, thank you, thanks Mary.

- Thank you.

Thank you to Senator Klobuchar, and thank you to all of you for tuning in, there is so much more to come with the Crosscut Festival, so stay tuned.

Meantime, have a good night.

(bright upbeat music)