Weekly Rewind: 4/11/25
More tariff back-and-forth, states pass major PBM reform, Senate confirms fifth and final FTC commissioner, and more.
By Kainoa Lowman
Welcome back to the The Economic Populist’s Weekly Rewind. Every Friday, we’ll briefly recap the week’s biggest news, updates, and developments the in fight against corporate power.
Here’s what to know this week.
More tariff back-and-forth
On Tuesday, AELP called on President Trump to immediately withdraw his April 2nd tariff plan, which lacks a coherent strategy. The administration’s mixed messages about the purpose and duration of these tariffs is generating economic chaos. Economic and financial crisis and a potential credit crunch are being caused both by the reckless tariff policy and by DOGE decimating government capacity to respond to these crises.
Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach gives a comprehensive play by play of the recent tariff actions in this new thread. As Lori lays out, on Wednesday, after growing fallout from the botched tariff rollout, the administration suspended certain bespoke country-by-country tariffs for 90 days. This suspension was ostensibly to negotiate with the over 75 countries that have the administration claims have asked the administration for talks. In the same Wednesday move, Trump increased tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% on top of existing tariffs. China has since responded in kind with tariffs on U.S. imports increased to 125%.
In a Wednesday statement, Lori Wallach said that, without transparency, “we could end up with the worst of all outcomes—a bunch of bad special interest deals, all of the economic damage caused by tariff uncertainty and no trade rebalancing, U.S. manufacturing capacity, or good jobs.” The Trump administration could be striking deals with dozens of countries, but absent transparency, the public will not know whether their interests or Trump’s billionaire cabinet and friends on Wall Street or his family are being served. Deals must focus on addressing the mercantilist practices that some countries employ, which fuel the extreme global trade imbalances that have deindustrialized the United States and today deny the benefits of trade to numerous countries worldwide. “The Trump administration must not use these talks to bully countries into gutting their online privacy and Big Tech anti-monopoly policies or undermining their food safety, health, or environmental laws,” Wallach said.
Strategic tariffs aimed at protecting key sectors and broad-based tariffs on large mercantilist countries like China, Taiwan, and Germany can help restore America’s ability to produce critical products necessary for the health, safety, and security of American families, while strengthening our nation’s resilience. However, the tariffs announced by President Trump on April 2 lack a coherent strategy. And the administration’s mixed messages about these tariffs’ purpose and duration is generating economic chaos and losses while deterring potential investment in domestic manufacturing that a well-structured tariff strategy—and the complementary policies necessary to actually rebuild American manufacturing—could otherwise stimulate.
- Katie Hettinga, Rethink Trade
States pass major PBM reform
Pharmacy benefit managers continue to draw bipartisan concern — and action.
A quick review: In recent decades, PBMs —pharma middlemen between drug manufacturers, insurers and pharmacies—have vertically integrated into the pharmacy business, enabling them to reimburse their owned pharmacies for drugs at preferential rates . This practice is while driving independent family pharmacies to the brink of extinction. Between January 2024 to February 2025, over 3,000 pharmacies have gone out of business across the US, many of them independently owned.
This week, two landmark bills passed by red state legislatures this week point to a reckoning for this egregious conflict of interest.
On Wednesday, the Alabama Legislature unanimously passed the Community Pharmacy Relief Act, which will require PBMs to reimburse independent pharmacies according to their drug acquisition and labor costs, preventing them from losing money just to fill patient prescriptions. The bill will also prevent vertically-integrated PBMs from steering patients to their own affiliated pharmacies, among other provisions.
Then, on Friday, Arkansas state lawmakers in both the House and Senate went a step further in passing HB 1150, a structural separation bill that prohibits PBMs from owning pharmacies at all.
Both bills will become law pending governors’ signatures.
The Arkansas bill mirrors the Patients Before Monopolies (PBM) Act (S.5503, H.R. 10362), introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA-04) and Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01) late last session. This federal legislation would force insurers and PBMs to divest their pharmacy businesses within three years, eliminating the conflicts of interest inherent to their common ownership. Auchincloss discussed the PBM Act at the launch event for Economic Liberties’ Break Up Big Medicine initiative, which is building a coalition to break up vertically-integrated healthcare monopolies like UnitedHealth Group.
Senate confirms fifth and final FTC commissioner
The Senate on Thursday confirmed Republican Mark Meador, Trump’s nominee for the vacant commissioner slot on the Federal Trade Commission. Meador formerly served as an antitrust lawyer at both the FTC and the DOJ, and as deputy chief counsel for antitrust and competition policy for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). While in Sen. Lee’s office, Meador drafted a bill that would have forced the breakup of Google. He also wrote a recent article for the Federalist Society on the need to revive the Robinson-Patman Act, which protects small retailers from being forced to subsidize supplier discounts to large chain stores.
With Meador’s confirmation, the FTC legally has a full five-person Commission. But as the legal fight continues over Trump’s unprecedented attempted illegal firings of Democratic minority commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, only the three Republicans currently have access to the FTC building.
Facebook antitrust trial set to begin
Meta (formerly Facebook) is heading to trial in a D.C. courtroom next week in the Federal Trade Commission’s monopoly lawsuit against the social media giant. The FTC’s case—originally filed by the first Trump administration in 2020 and continued by the Biden enforcers—centers on Meta’s anticompetitive acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
With the April 14 trial date rapidly approaching, Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who will take the witness stand) have been sweating. That’s why you’ve seen reports that Zuckerberg has been visiting the White House and even buying a $23 million mansion in D.C. as he continues his aggressive lobbying campaign to urge President Trump to settle and avoid court. This inside game is a classic tactic for monopolists, but it’s unclear how effective it will be in deterring a case against one of the most evidently harmful Big Tech giants, and an intuitively-understood monopoly over platforms for keeping in touch with friends and family.
Economic Liberties will be back in the courtroom providing updates from Big Tech on Trial (check out the new curtain raiser piece). Make sure you’re subscribed and stay tuned for more updates from us as this oligarch finally goes to court.
Quick Hits
On Tuesday, as Trump administration's tariffs announcement sent U.S. stocks tumbling across the board, the share prices of Big Medicine healthcare monopolies like UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, and Humana surged dramatically. That's because the administration also announced it would hike federal payments to private Medicare Advantage plans in 2026, despite their well-documented history of fraudulent, wasteful billing practices. UnitedHealth, the largest Medicare Advantage plan provider, is up by double-digits as of Friday.
Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Democrats of the Senate Banking Committee have launched a new blog. With a recession looking increasingly likely, we’re looking forward to reading longform economic analysis from Sen. Warren once again.
Alongside Small Business Majority and other partners, Economic Liberties sent a letter to the FTC requesting that they resume open meetings and continue to initiate public comment dockets—legacies of former Chair Lina Khan’s efforts to democratize the agency.
No need for these details. Trump is a psychopath. He's doing what comes naturally for psychopaths. Destroying everything, changing all the rules all the time, constant chaos and panic. That's the whole story.