Competition & Regulatory Policy

Comments on the NLRB Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Joint Employer Standard   The Honorable Lauren M. McFerran Chairman National Labor Relations Board 1015 Half Street S.E. Washington, D.C. 20570-0001   RE: Docket NLRB-2022-0001 Standard for Determining Joint-Employer Status, 87 Fed. Reg. 54641 (Sept. 7, 2022) VIA ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION   Dear Chairman McFerran: The Small Business […]

SMALL BUSINESS INSIDER By Karen Kerrigan – “If you can’t grow via acquisition, what’s the alternative? You basically create a walled garden of innovation. You are making all that innovation internally and you’ve basically shut out everybody else.” – Daniel Sokol, Professor, Carolyn Craig Franklin Chair in Law and Business, Affiliate Professor of Business, Marshall School […]

by Raymond J. Keating – Small Business Saturday arrives on November 26. It’s a day established to emphasize the importance of small businesses as the Christmas holiday shopping seasons really kicks into high gear after Thanksgiving. In local communities across America, shoppers are being encouraged to “Shop Small” as part of the annual campaign. Such […]

Federal Trade Commission Office of the Secretary 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Suite CC-5610 (Annex B) Washington, DC 20580 Re: Proposed Rule, Federal Trade Commission; Commercial Surveillance (87 Fed. Reg. 51,273-51,299, August 22, 2022) Dear Commissioners: We, the undersigned organizations, representing a diverse set of industries as well as organizations advocating for the promotion of innovation, […]

by Raymond J. Keating – The Democratic majority on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released a policy statement meant to make sense of how the agency will alter the interpretation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act dealing with “unfair methods of competition.” In reality, it’s more accurate to note that this […]

Overview: The Small Business Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) strongly opposes harmful credit card routing legislation introduced this year in the U.S. Senate (S. 4674) and U.S. House (H.R. 8874). If enacted, credit card routing mandates would be burdensome for small businesses. The mandates would drive billions of dollars from the credit market and force financial […]

“The U.K.’s CMA has taken direct aim at America’s startup ecosystem through its brash overreach.”  For Immediate Release Washington, D.C. – Today, Meta announced that it will sell GIF-sharing platform Giphy in response to a final decision reached by the United Kingdom’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA), which asserted the acquisition could reduce competition among […]

by Raymond J. Keating – I could write that I have my shocked face on right now, but that would be a lie. Elected official are pushing an agenda supposedly targeted at “big business” – indeed, at so-called “Big Tech” and “monopolies” – but small businesses would wind up paying a heavy price if that […]

“Inflation” continues to be the number one concern of small business owners.  Higher costs are eating into small business profits, which prevents them from paying bills, making investments, and raising wages to compete for employees. Several recent surveys point to the pain that inflation is causing small businesses: ● In a CNBC survey, 43% of […]

SMALL BUSINESS INSIDER PERSPECTIVE by Raymond J. Keating – Federal politicians and their appointees asserting that various U.S. technological leaders are monopolies that need hyper-regulation, perhaps to the point of government breaking up these companies, is striking for its ignorance and/or arrogance. In reality, technology markets rank as hyper-dynamic and hyper-competitive. And that of course […]