N.Y. needs better laws to deal with monopolies

Bill Stewart bumps into corporate power everywhere he turns.

In a strip of shops along Main Street in Long Island’s Kings Park, Stewart packs his toy store, LI Toys & Games, with everything from big name action figures to top-quality model kits made in a nearby Long Island factory. He also sells online, as most retailers must nowadays, with listings on his own website, ebay and, of course, Amazon.

Stewart’s store has been going strong for years. But over time, his business has grown harder to operate as the retail industry — and the economy overall — has come under the thumb of a handful of powerful companies.

Today, big toymakers like Hasbro and Mattel often bypass smaller independent stores altogether. They sell directly to giants like Walmart, Amazon and Target — which together grab about 65 percent of all U.S. toy sales — while Stewart buys action figures from distributors charging him as much as Walmart charges shoppers for the same toy.

Then there’s Google’s dominant ad business, which Stewart relies on for new customers, and Visa and Mastercard’s credit card swipe fees, which can climb above five percent of every purchase.

Amazon is the worst of them, he says. The online retail titan buries Stewart’s listings in its algorithm in favor of its own products, even when Stewart offers the lower price, all while pulling his products from its digital shelves for erroneous reasons with seemingly no recourse. “If they don’t bury you, they’ll just take you out of the equation,” Stewart said.

“I can’t afford to compete with the big boys.”

Neither can many small New York businesses, and businesses across the U.S. Small, independent shops, makers and wholesalers create vibrant communities where folks can make a decent living and move into the middle class. But for decades, policymakers and courts have given every advantage to a few powerful corporations by repeatedly handcuffing federal and local antitrust laws, making them nearly impossible to enforce. Our economy is more fragile, and our communities less equal, because of it.

For New York’s independent businesses, relief may be on the way. The 21st Century Antitrust Act, introduced by Sen. Michael Gianaris, D - Queens, and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, D Bronx, would make New York the vanguard of a national antimonopoly movement and a

model for other states to support their workers and small businesses in the face of monopoly power.

The bill would make New York the first state to clearly define what corporate dominance looks like and what it means to abuse that power. It would also be the nation’s first antitrust law to explicitly include the welfare of workers.

While most states have their own antitrust laws to address corporate power, those laws are often handcuffed by pro-monopoly court judgments that have hampered federal enforcement. Other state laws, like New York’s current law, don’t explicitly prohibit the harm dominant companies can inflict.

Unlike the malleable and unwieldy standards courts typically impose in federal antitrust cases, New York’s proposed law would make clear: If you can dictate prices and business terms in your industry — whether it be to your customers, your workers or your suppliers — then you wield power, and abusing that power will expose you to law enforcement.

New Yorkers need this law, now more than ever. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 13,600 more small businesses in New York closed than had opened in the 12 months before March 2020 — and that was before the spate of closures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As small businesses struggle to survive, their ability to reach customers is now controlled by some of the nation’s most powerful, predatory corporate giants.

New York’s proposed rewrite of its antitrust laws would help stop the abuses corporate titans have inflicted on workers, small businesses and communities. If and when the bill becomes law, it will return power and freedom to regular New Yorkers — and become a beacon for the movement to take back control from corporate dominance.