Weekly Rewind: 6/12/26
Justice Department Approves Paramount-Warner Deal as Merger Fight Mounts, and more.
By Zachary Hagen-Smith and Katie Hettinga
Welcome back to The Economic Populist’s Weekly Rewind. Every Friday, we’ll briefly recap the week’s biggest news, updates, and developments in the fight against corporate power.
Here’s what to know this week.
Justice Department Approves Paramount-Warner Deal as Merger Fight Mounts
The DOJ’s antitrust division okayed Paramount-Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers-Discovery on Friday, determining that the inclusion of CBS, CNN, HBO, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Paramount Pictures under one roof didn’t pose a threat to competition. It’s the type of conclusion only a captured Justice Department could reach.
The over one hundred workers and small business owners who attended our Los Angeles kickoff of the “Main Street vs the Merger” tour opposing this merger agree: this merger is bad news.
As AELP Senior Adviser and former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya — who moderated a panel at the Saturday town hall featuring comedian Adam Conover, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, and Writers Guild of America West President Michele Mulroney — reflected after the event, the afternoon made clear that for workers, the scars from previous mergers had yet to heal. Attendees recounted stories of job loss after Paramount merged with Skydance. They talked about how production slows when acquired studios are forced to cut costs, how documentary filmmakers lose distribution outlets, and local service providers are forced to pay conglomerate-owned vendors. All problems this merger would make worse. The main takeaway, as one writer who attended put it: “If this merger goes through, this will be the death of our industry.”
It’s not just workers who will suffer. If Warner’s past mergers are any indication, customers are going to be footing higher charges for worse products. “You will laugh less,” a former writer told us on Saturday. With tens of billions in debt to Wall Street and Gulf dictators, Paramount’s leadership won’t be taking risks on fresh and unique stories. Their plan instead: squeeze Warner Bros.’ IP for all the shareholder value it’s worth and deploy AI slop throughout production process.
But the fight is just getting started. The day before the L.A. event, Reuters reported that a bipartisan group of states-attorneys general, led by California AG Rob Bonta but including AGs from New York, Colorado, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Connecticut and Tennessee, are preparing a lawsuit to block the deal, potentially with a superstar trial lawyer on the case. The European Union is also now investigating the deal’s funding from Gulf sovereign wealth funds.
Paramount, meanwhile, is doing all it can to keep up. The company just hired a former Biden official to lead their lobbying blitz targeting Democrats. They’re rapidly trying to win over global enforcers, too. The Ellisons on Friday sold their theater chain and are considering selling off Paramount’s kids channels. They’re also hounding Bonta’s office with a list of unspecified concessions.
It’s going to be a struggle, but the odds are tilting in our favor.
Next up in our work against this deal: the Main Street vs the Merger tour is hitting New York City on Saturday, with a panel that will include Senator Cory Booker, Hollywood icon James Schamus, and WGA-East executive director Sam Wheeler, and more. After that, the tour will stop for its final segment in Atlanta on Tuesday in a roundtable featuring Congressman Hank Johnson, Democracy Defenders Action Senior Counsel Gabriel Lezra, as well as dozens of entertainment industry workers.
This merger isn’t happening without a fight, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted on all our progress on it.
Deceptive Decrease in U.S. Trade Deficit
President Trump touted a reduction in the monthly trade deficit following the release of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s trade report this week.
Looking into the numbers we see a the smoke and mirrors of the deficit news. Yes, the trade deficit narrowed by $704 million from March to April, but only because a $8.7 billion surge in petroleum exports outpaced a $6.4 billion increase in goods imports. Because the narrowing was driven entirely by oil — necessary because of the Strait of Hormuz closure caused by Trump’s war on Iran -- it really doesn’t translate to any boost in U.S. manufacturing employment or productive capacity.
The imports data also reveals a big gap for the local U.S. economy. Looking at the specific goods coming in to the country, the driver appears to be the massive demand for AI infrastructure buildout. Even as the administration has prioritized “strengthening American leadership in artificial intelligence” (perhaps related to Trump family investments in AI data center companies or the friendliness between the White House and Big Tech), the United States’ capacity to manufacture chips and other necessary inputs has lagged. April import growth was driven by increases of computers, semiconductors (chips), and telecommunications equipment. This follows on a recent Federal Reserve study that found that a significant portion of the 2025 U.S. goods trade deficit was driven by the AI boom.
So, while the Trump administration made political hay from the headlines that seemed to indicate progress toward Trump’s stated goal of rebalancing U.S. trade, the actual data tell a different story. Real progress requires a new approach to U.S. trade and industrial policy which incentivizes investment in U.S. manufacturing capacity, not just press spin masking favoritism to Big Tech Broligarchs and more imports.
Real Estate Mergers Sell Out On Affordability
The antitrust bureau of the New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office is investigating Compass, the giant real estate brokerage that, as we’ve covered, acquired its rival Anywhere earlier this year in an allegedly corrupt regulatory process that allowed it to bypass antitrust scrutiny.
The AG’s concern? Compass’s influence in New York City.
While the FTC let the Compass-Anywhere deal through, in part because the new company’s nationwide sales volume market share would be below the merger guidelines’ 30% threshold, in some places it goes far above that. In Manhattan, it’s at over 80%, meaning Compass has almost total control of sales in one of America’s most popular places to live.
But that’s not the only reason Compass is catching flack.
Compass’s anticompetitive private-listing strategy, which lets sellers market homes exclusively within the Compass network before listing them publicly is increasingly in anti-monopolists’ crosshairs for reducing transparency, limiting buyer competition, and allowing brokerages to steer deals and inflate commissions. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont recently signed a bill requiring agents to publicly list a home for sale as soon as they begin marketing it. The New York legislature just sent similar legislation to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk, too.
Compass’s abuses don’t end there, though. The Capitol Forum recently broke that Compass is using its newfound market power to pressure Boston-area real estate photographers to hand back rebates between 10% and 15%.
If Compass-Anywhere is any indication, real estate mergers are a raw deal for prospective homebuyers, renters, and communities.
And, unfortunately, there are more coming down the pipeline.
CoStar — the real estate behemoth behind Apartments.com, Homes.com, and other sales platforms — recently announced its acquisition of homebuilding data and analytics firm Zonda. From construction to sales CoStar would be the information gatekeeper if this deal goes through. A fact that could exacerbate the country’s housing shortage and lead to ever increasing prices. In short, CoStart would have outsized influence over what gets built, when, and at what scale. As AELP’s Research Manager Laurel Kilgour said in a recent press statement: “By locking up data from across the real estate life cycle, they can call the shots like a cartel ringleader.”
Also in the mix: AvalonBay and Equity Residential are merging in a $69 billion deal that will create America’s apartment owner. The goal? Not just to beat out rising costs from materials, insurance, and high interest rates, but to get a handle on supply and make it easier to raise rents.
As housing and real estate consolidation ramps up, we will keep a close eye on all developments happening on this front.
Quick Hits
In two weeks, AELP’s fight against big healthcare conglomerates is hitting D.C.. On June 25th, AELP will be hosting a Break Up Big Medicine conference, bringing together healthcare practitioners, workers, elected officials, organizers, and policy experts who are leading the fight against the PBMs and other corporate middlemen jacking up healthcare costs. Headliners will include Senator Ron Wyden, Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon, and others. Learn more and RSVP for it here.
Surveillance pricing revelations abound this week. The Washington Post on Thursday got hit with class action lawsuit accusing the Bezos-owned paper of illegally using audience reading habits to create personal “pricing profiles” without proper disclosure. A Business Insider investigation into Stubhub released Wednesday found similar practices, with identical tickets shown simultaneously to different users priced differently, suggesting some algorithmic malfeasance.
As surveillance pricing grows omnipresent, the pushback is ramping up. Next week, New York City will have a hearing on its proposed surveillance pricing ban, as Gov. Hochul continues to consider a statewide ban. But not all surveillance pricing crackdowns are created equal. More Perfect Union is out with a new video on how some states like New York are on the verge of meaningfully fighting back, while others, like Maryland, as we’ve covered, prefer to do BigTech’s bidding by passing “bans” riddled with loopholes and exemptions.
Following Spirit Airlines’s closure, a bankruptcy judge Wednesday ruled that Spirit’s former top three executives are entitled to almost $2 million in potential bonuses. Meanwhile, claims from Spirit’s 17,000 laid off workers remain unresolved.
New reporting indicates that the DOJ economist leading the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger review, which will advise the Surface Transportation Board (STB) decision making, has a history of skepticism towards trans-continental railroad mergers like this one. This revelation follows the STB’s pause on the merger’s review process, and the sudden departure of Norfolk Southern’s COO.
In Rhode Island, lawmakers sent a bill to Gov. Dan McKee that would ban restrictive covenants blocking properties from being used as grocery stores, aiming to boost competition and food access.
At the National Independent Venue Association’s annual conference, the former DOJ attorney who led the Live Nation-Ticketmaster case slammed the DOJ’s March settlement with the company, claiming he thought they were going to win and that the settlement came as a shock.
Foreign Affairs is out with a new piece from our friend Brad Setser and European analyst Shahin Valée breaking down how currency undervaluation by China and other Asian exporters is driving global trade imbalances and how sharper multilateral action could fight back.
ICYMI: Senior Adviser Alvaro Bedoya reflects on the L.A. town hall opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Also catch Bedoya on KCRW’s The Business, where he sits down with the Hollywood Reporter’s Editor-at-Large Kim Masters for a conversation about what the merger means for workers, consumers, and free speech.