The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENERGY
Oil prices fall after a terrorist threat is stopped.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow Timothy P. Carney on how cooperation between government and big business contributes to high gas prices.
“These complaints hold traces of the truth: (1) We ought to be angry at big business for the high gas prices; and (2) there is something the government can do about it. But the problem is not corporate “price gouging” and the solution is not new subsidies or regulations. The corporate misbehavior causing high gas prices is what I call “subsidy suckling” and ‘regulatory robber-baronry.’”
2. AGRICULTURE
U.S. sugar growers work toward reform of sugar subsidies.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar Fran Smith on the problems with U.S. sugar program.
“Reform efforts have been unsuccessful for decades because sugar producers could consistently muster enough political support for their political allies to block significant domestic changes. However, pressure for reform has not only arisen from criticism inside the United States but also from outside—for example, progress in liberalizing trade in other areas puts pressure on agriculture to follow suit; bilateral trade agreements with neighboring countries open up the U.S. markets, therefore increasing demand to provide poorer countries with better chances to participate in the world economy.” (Free registration required for Chicago Tribune link.)
3. TECHNOLOGY
European Union investigators muscle up to Hollywood over new DVD formats.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr. on how European regulators have caused difficulties for Microsoft—for not consumer benefit.
“Antitrust actions against successful businesses, such as the European Union’s antitrust penalties against Microsoft, threaten to disrupt innovation and economic growth by substituting political management for market processes, by protecting competitors rather than competition. Americans are increasingly less confident that ‘competition policy’ and antitrust regulations yield any real advantages to consumers or producers—but that they offer many opportunities for firms to use government to cripple innovation or their competitors.”
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