Weekly Rewind: 8/7/26
Nomination Hearing Held for Trump’s Next Antitrust Pick, and more.
By Zachary Hagen-Smith & Luis Fernando Chavez
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.
Nomination Hearing Held for Trump’s Next Antitrust Pick
Adam Candeub, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust division, had a lot to answer for at his Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing. Republican Sen. John Kennedy grilled Candeub, who serves as general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on the agency’s weaponization against media critics, while Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff highlighted Candeub’s past op-ed for a white nationalist outlet. When it comes to antitrust, Candeub told the committee that “free markets generally have the answer.” This is par for Candeub’s course: at the FCC, he rubber-stamped major telecoms mergers, while in a chapter of Project 2025, he indicated that antitrust should mostly be handled state rather than federal enforcers.
Candeub is of a piece with the administration’s record. Since Trump returned to the White House, the DOJ has only challenged two mergers, one of which it settled. Gail Slater, the former DOJ antitrust division head, was ousted amidst very modest antitrust scrutiny against Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of rival Juniper Networks. For Trump’s antitrust appointees, it’s get with the corporate agenda, or get out. We, sadly, don’t expect much to change. As Phillip Berenbroick, our Senior Strategist for Policy and Advocacy, noted this week, “Nothing about Adam Candeub’s record suggests he’ll do anything at the Antitrust Division except continue to carry water for big corporations.”
In Scrutiny Against Utility Mega-Merger, Virginia Governor Has Chance to Prove Bona Fides
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is intervening against the largest utility merger in U.S. history. In a Thursday Washington Post op-ed, Gov. Spanberger announced a formal request to be a party to Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) review of NextEra’s $67 billion acquisition of Virginia’s largest utility, Dominion. There’s no doubt this deal, which would create America’s biggest utility in the world’s top data center hub, would be bad for Virginians: in Florida, 27% of NextEra customer’s electric bills went to utility profits and shareholder returns (the second highest rate in the country), and the merging utilities are already laying the groundwork for more rate hikes.
The real question here isn’t about whether it’s a bad merger — it is — but about whether Gov. Spanberger is interested in taking meaningful action against this deal or just playing politics. While Gov. Spanberger has done some good things against utility monopolies, like appointing a strong candidate to her new chief energy officer position, expanding public input, and pushing PJM to better protect ratepayers, she largely hasn’t addressed structural monopoly concerns, like return-on-equity (ROE) reform. It’s also still unclear whether her new data center tax — she opposes a moratorium — will actually reduce costs or pass them through to customers.
While she has taken a strong first step, if Gov. Spanberger wants to be on the side of lower electricity bills, further action against the NextEra-Dominion merger would be a ripe opportunity to prove it. She could, for instance, call a special session to strengthen the legal standard of review for the merger or push ROE reform so Virginia isn’t such a mecca for utility profits. Accountability to get utility political activities out of customer bills would also be a worthwhile fight, as would demanding a clear-eyed consideration of whether NextEra’s corrupt track record in Florida is the type of corporate behavior Virginia ratepayers should have to deal with. As this merger proceeds, we’ll continue to keep an eye on the fight against utility monopolies.
Latest Data Show American Manufacturing Decline During Trump II, Not Promised Rebound
Despite campaign promises by President Trump to create a manufacturing “boom” and reshore U.S. manufacturing and related jobs, as well as claims by administration officials to have revived American manufacturing, the latest trade and industrial data covering the first half of 2026 tell no such story.
In fact, an analysis just released by Economic Liberties’ Rethink Trade division shows that the opposite has occurred.
When we crunched the numbers, we found U.S. manufacturing employment is down 75,000 positions from January 2025, when Trump was inaugurated for his second term. True, there was a slight uptick in manufacturing jobs numbers in January and February 2026, but it has since stagnated and remained flat since March.
At the same time, U.S. factory construction spending has plummeted 30% as of the latest data in June 2026 compared to January 2025. If you look back further, the numbers tell an even worse story. Manufacturing jobs are down by 305,000 compared to their 15-year peak in January of 2023. And after peaking at $264.4 billion (inflation-adjusted) in August 2024, U.S. factory construction spending has declined to $172 billion in June 2026. (Reminder: building of new factories is a leading indicator of future industrial expansion.)
The U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods is deeper for the first half of 2026 then it was at the end of 2024 before Trump returned to the White House. And although the overall U.S. goods and services trade deficit narrowed, the improvement was driven largely by increased exports of commodities, such as gold, oil, and liquefied natural gas (LNG), rather than by stronger manufacturing performance. True, it is not all negative — there’s been a steady increase in shipments of American-made durable goods. — but overall the indicators do not show the domestic manufacturing base is rebounding nor prospects for solid job growth for American manufacturing workers. Instead of the promised “golden age” for manufacturing Trump and other administration officials have touted, the data show Trump’s manufacturing Renaissance is still very much in what the social media savvy would call a flop era.
Quick Hits
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a lawsuit against Amazon this week alleging the company used control over its delivery network to limit drivers’ ability to unionize, prevent contractors from competing for workers, and keep wages artificially low.
The FCC repealed its 39% local broadcast ownership cap, removing a major roadblock for broadcast giant Nexstar’s contested $6.2 billion acquisition of TEGNA. Separately, a federal judge ruled that Nexstar executives violated an injunction by joining Tegna’s board, keeping the merger on ice as a bipartisan coalition of states attempts to block it.
Rethink Trade Director Lori Wallach is out with an insightful op-ed in Foreign Affairs proposing a new vision for balanced trade agreements that prioritize resilient supply chains, fair competition, and labor and environmental protections, as an alternative to the the neoliberal trade order that both failed workers and fueled dangerous economic imbalances.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott halted approvals for new data centers seeking grid connections until state regulators fully audit the proposed projects.
Senior Fellow Hannah Garden-Monheit has a deeply personal op-ed in MS NOW sharing how her late father’s battle with cancer got even worse when UnitedHealthcare denied medically necessary rehabilitation after his leg amputation. Garden-Monheit, with Senior Policy Analyst for Health Care Emma Freer, lay out how these prior authorization harms patients and wastes clinician resources in a new Economic Liberties report that makes the case for banning this cruel corporate practice, which all too often prioritizes the health of the corporation over that of the patient.
This week, as the Paramount-Warner Bros. antitrust cases got a March 2027 court date, Paramount CEO David Ellison published a New York Times op-ed trying to frame opposition to the merger as pure politics, but — as a new Economic Liberties fact sheet makes clear — market concentration is the real issue at stake. Also on the Paramount-Warner front: the UK approved the deal in exchange for concessions on editorial independence and separating news operations, but — as a separate new Economic Liberties brief emphasizes — such merger concessions are often hollow and fail to address the harms of increased concentration.
Despite pushing the FTC, the Pentagon failed to secure merger restrictions on IonQ’s $2 billion acquisition of SkyWater even that would have require guarantees that the chipmaker’s specialized quantum-computing foundry remain accessible to competitors.
Also on tech: Economic Liberties filed a Monday amicus brief urging the D.C. Circuit strengthen Google antitrust remedies by banning payments for default placement for its search engine in search bars, widgets, virtual assistants, and other digital spaces, warning that Google is using the same exclusionary tactics that entrenched its search monopoly now to dominate generative AI through deals securing Gemini’s integration with Apple and Samsung devices. This comes as Google reshuffles Gemini leadership around its Bay Area headquarters and taps debt markets to finance its aggressive AI expansion.
Minnesota regulators approved a massive $211 million Xcel Energy rate hike that boosts the utility’s allowed profits, adding roughly $35 million annually to customer costs.
On Tuesday, Senior Counsel Lee Hepner testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on how AI-powered surveillance pricing undermines fair and predictable markets.
The Senate is nearing a vote on legislation that would shield the NCAA and the country’s most powerful athletic conferences from antitrust scrutiny while restricting athletes’ rights.
ICYMI: How did electricity bills get so high? Policy & Advocacy Associate Lilly Solomon investigates how utilities rig your bill and how some policymakers are fighting back.