The Kid Rock-Kamala Coalition

WSJ Opinion cited CEI’s expert on the U.S. economy

Now the White House is attacking secondary markets? Perhaps soon someone will have to explain the value of stock exchanges. Wayne Crews explains at Forbes why this is a terrible precedent even if the order itself has relatively little impact on the U.S. economy:

With Kid Rock standing beside him in the Oval Office, Trump signed the “Combating Unfair Practices” executive order, empowering the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Treasury Department. But if markets can’t handle price resale markets and venue ownership competition in the case of mere entertainment, the implication is that they can’t handle anything, let alone critical sectors like retirement, education, energy, or health care—nor much of the subject matter of Trump’s deregulatory executive orders. Trump’s remark on ticket scalping—“I didn’t know too much about it, but I checked it out and it is a big problem”—was something of a red flag.

The order directs the FTC to work with the U.S. Attorney General to “ensure that competition laws are appropriately enforced in the concert and entertainment industry, including where venues, ticketing agents, or combinations thereof operate to the detriment of artists and fans,” and to “rigorously enforce” the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act. New regulations to force disclosure of . . . dynamic pricing appear to be on tap—paving the way for a misguided attack on poorly understood innovations that are actually important in enabling economy-wide efficiencies (such as in airlines and hospitality).

Read more at WSJ Opinion