Listen: How Two Recent Supreme Court Decisions Impact Local Economies

Amid all the news from the U.S. Supreme Court in recent weeks, two rulings in particular have important implications for independent businesses and the future of efforts to check the power of big companies, especially tech giants like Amazon. In this episode of our Building Local Power podcast, ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell and Nick Stumo-Langer dig into these two cases.

In the case Ohio v. American Express, the Court’s 5-4 ruling has both immediate and long-term implications for monopoly power. Its direct impact is to give credit card companies wide latitude to extract fees from merchants and consumers, while its broader impact is to advance a theory that will make it more difficult for the government to bring cases against “platform” monopolies like Amazon. Nick and Stacy discuss the case, and where the anti-monopoly movement goes next.

In the case South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., the Court granted states the authority to require out-of-state and online retailers to collect state sales taxes. It’s a victory for independent businesses, but Nick and Stacy discuss how the decision is long overdue, and how significant its delay has been in Amazon’s growth and dominance of e-commerce.  Listen to the Episode

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