Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we explore how the Administration’s new H1-B visa policy favors dominant tech monopolies and how Sen. Murphy’s Fair Prices Act favor’s free enterprise

Trump’s New H-1B Policies Further Entrench Tech Monopolies

March 19 marked the end of the annual lottery registration for H-1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas widely used to hire guest workers. Thanks to major policy changes announced by President Trump last September, this year’s process ended up favoring the most powerful of the incumbent tech monopolies.

Many conservatives and progressives alike have long criticized the H-1B program because it makes workers dependent on their employers, who have to “sponsor” them for the full time they remain in the country. This means workers on H-1Bs have less power to negotiate wages or conditions, which in turn can harm American workers more generally.

The theory here is that firms that employ guest workers with fewer rights and lower wages can outcompete firms that hire employees with full labor and employment rights, and that having precarious guest workers on payroll also gives companies more ability to pressure their other employees. As Senator Bernie Sanders put it, H-1B visas “hurt one type of worker and exploit another.”

Until recently, however, one redeeming aspect of the program was that it at least treated both startups and large corporations similarly. By giving startups comparable access to this global talent pool, the program did facilitate some greater competition in cutting edge industries.

When Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, it originally instructed that these visas––now capped at 85,0000 annually––be allocated on a first come, first served basis, without any special favor to different kinds of employers (outside of key exemptions to the cap for higher education institutions, research organizations, and their affiliates). But beginning in 2007, applications began to exceed the cap, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to find other ways to apportion the coveted slots.

Initially, the government opted for a random selection process. As the Economic Policy Institute has written, the original decision was arguably a “choice of convenience and accident of history rather than a well-reasoned response to a phenomenon unanticipated by the statute.” Since its implementation, users have informally dubbed random selection as the “H-1B lottery.” Over time, random selection has been broadly attacked on how it subjects the fortunes of both firms and applicants to chance.

One major attempt at changing the system came in 2020, when the first Trump administration sought to prioritize visas for employers offering the highest salaries. This in turn led to a new round of criticisms focused on how the changes would hurt startups, nonprofits, public employers, and small business. Sandra Feist, a labor-focused Minnesota legislator and immigration attorney, attacked the new approach, stating that restricting H-1Bs to “high-paid elite jobs with the largest, wealthiest corporations” ignored the contributions other employers make to their communities, and was an “anathema” to the culture of the US. Upon coming into office, President Biden withdrew the proposed rule.

The H-1B question surged back up almost immediately after Trump’s election in 2024. While nativist elements of the MAGA coalition continued to oppose the program, tech industry allies of Trump like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy publicly pushed for its expansion. Trump initially sided with the tech bosses, but after sustained backlash, the President last September announced a $100,000 fee for H-1B applications and a new weighted selection process.

The administration sought to depict the move as addressing labor and cultural concerns over the interests of the Big Tech companies. But the responses from the private sector reveal a different story.

Many Big Tech leaders expressed support for the changes, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. Startup groups, by contrast, have expressed growing alarm, especially about the new $100,000 fee. Garry Tan, CEO of American startup accelerator Y-Combinator wrote that the “$100k H1B fee won’t bother big tech” but “kneecaps startups” in the process.

The weighting of the selection process to favor higher salary jobs tips the scales against market entrants even more clearly. As public comment on the rule highlighted, startups are more likely to “compensate employees with equity, bonuses, and the promise of long-term growth,” which are excluded from the weighted selection formula. The long-term effects may be stark. Winning the H-1B lottery is linked with a startup’s increased likelihood of securing venture capital, successfully launching a public offering within five years, and creating patents––the kind of achievements that position them to compete with the big players.

One founder of a small tech company commenting on the new lottery system put it bluntly. The “policy doesn’t level the playing field,” they said. “It entrenches monopolies.”

Sen. Murphy Proposes Act to Curb Price Discrimination Based on Input from Open Markets

Building on extensive advice and input from the Open Markets Institute, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) last week introduced the Fair Prices for Local Businesses Act, landmark legislation to restore fair competition for small businesses by curbing the ability of large corporations to charge smaller firms more for the same product or service. The Act would modernize and strengthen enforcement of longstanding antitrust protections, including the Robinson-Patman Act, by closing legal loopholes and equipping regulators and small businesses with stronger tools to challenge discriminatory pricing practices.

Applauding the act, Open Market legal director Sandeep Vaheesan said, “Giants like Amazon and Walmart use their market muscle to squeeze suppliers and their workers, extract discriminatory discounts and other concessions, and thereby gain an unfair and illegitimate advantage over rivals, whether regional chains or mom-and-pop stores.

Open Markets has long advocated for the revival of the Robinson-Patman Act, which was first enacted in 1936 but which was all but abandoned by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. This includes the pioneering article Breaking the Chain, in 2006 in Harper’s Magazine, about the dangers of concentrated retail power,. It also includes, more recently, two landmark law review articles on the act, “The Robinson-Patman Act as a Fair Competition Measure” and “Controlling Buyer and Seller Power: Reviving Enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act.”

Open Markets Submits Testimony on Illinois Bill Banning Non-Competes for All Workers

Building on extensive advice and input from the Open Markets Institute, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) last week introduced the Fair Prices for Local Businesses Act, landmark legislation to restore fair competition for small businesses by curbing the ability of large corporations to charge smaller firms more for the same product or service. The Act would modernize and strengthen enforcement of longstanding antitrust protections, including the Robinson-Patman Act, by closing legal loopholes and equipping regulators and small businesses with stronger tools to challenge discriminatory pricing practices.

Applauding the act, Open Market legal director Sandeep Vaheesan said, “Giants like Amazon and Walmart use their market muscle to squeeze suppliers and their workers, extract discriminatory discounts and other concessions, and thereby gain an unfair and illegitimate advantage over rivals, whether regional chains or mom-and-pop stores.

Open Markets has long advocated for the revival of the Robinson-Patman Act, which was first enacted in 1936 but which was all but abandoned by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. This includes the pioneering article Breaking the Chain, in 2006 in Harper’s Magazine, about the dangers of concentrated retail power,. It also includes, more recently, two landmark law review articles on the act, “The Robinson-Patman Act as a Fair Competition Measure” and “Controlling Buyer and Seller Power: Reviving Enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act.”

📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:

The Financial Times published a conversation between FT columnist Rana Foroohar and Open Markets Institute Europe director Max von Thun in which he argued that Europe needs to tackle its dependencies on U.S. Big Tech and China’s clean energy manufacturing. In response to Foroohar’s question about whether Europe is likely to take a leadership position in the global economy, von Thun replied, “There’s progress in fixing the problem, including new EU laws… which target Big Tech dominance and state-funded mercantilism.”

The Financial Times’s Foroohar also cited a paper on the U.S. shipbuilding industry published last year by Open Markets transportation analyst Arnav Rao, Charting a New Course: Steering U.S. Maritime Policy Towards Security and Prosperity, in an article about the maritime insecurity explosed the war with Iran.
Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn in March spoke at the conference The New Geoeconomics of Competition Law organized by the Georgetown Institute of International Economic Law and the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society. Lynn spoke on a panel titled International Relations and Competition policy: Between Globalism and Nationalism. Other speakers included the presidents of the French and Portuguese competition authorities, the chair of the Brazilian agency CADE, and a Commissioner of the Japan Fair Trade agency. Lynn spoke of how democracies were fighting a two-front war against the US corporations that dominant communications platforms and Chinese industrial mercantilism.
OMI industrial policy program manager Audrey Stienon and Europe director Max von Thun coauthored an article for Competition Policy International urging governments to implement industrial policy that would support democracy. “As countries around the world rush to encourage greater investment and growth in their domestic AI industries, we argue that unless governments develop industrial policy strategies centered on strengthening democratic economic governance, they risk consolidating corporate control of critical technologies in ways that threaten key democratic and societal objectives,” they wrote.
Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets director Courtney Radsch coauthored an op-ed in Canada’s Hill Times urging policymakers to force Meta to pay for local news it displays on Facebook. “As Meta lobbies Ottawa on the return of news to Facebook, policymakers should know that must-carry approaches alone will not solve the challenges of disinformation and propaganda, or fix the news media’s monopolized markets or broken economic structures,” Radsch and her coauthor wrote.
Variety reported that Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act following criticism of the Department of Justice’s Live Nation settlement, working in collaboration with former enforcement officials and advocacy groups including the Open Markets Institute.

🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:

A landmark jury verdict in Los Angeleas found Meta and Google’s YouTube liable for designing addictive social media platforms that harmed a young user, awarding damages and marking a major breakthrough in holding Big Tech accountable for product design and its impact on users. In a similar case, a New Mexico jury held Meta liable for $375 million in civil damages for failing to safeguard kids who use its apps from child predators. (New York Times, CNBC)
A U.S. district court temporarily paused a planned merger between media companies Nexstar and Tegna, whose combined local news station footprint would cover 80 percent of U.S. households. The decision follows a move by eight Democratic state attorneys general to block Nexstar’s $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna. (Politico)

📈 VITAL STAT:

1 year

The length of time between when OpenAI launched the short-form video app Sora, and its decision last week to shutter the service, as part of a major retrenchment in the rapidly consolidating AI market. (CNBC)

📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:

The Doom Loop: In his book, trade economist and Brookings fellow Eswar Prasad argues that globalization has deepened economic inequality, stoked political backlash, and prompted escalating trade wars. While the growing influence of “middle power” countries like India, Brazil, and Indonesia once suggested a multipolar future, these nations are now increasingly forced to pick sides as the United States and China fight for global dominance.

The Corner Newsletter: Trump’s H1-B Policy Promotes Monopoly & Sen. Murphy Embraces OMI Strategy on Pricing Law (April 7th, 2026)