​The U.S. is a global leader in technology and innovation. That didn’t happen by chance. It happened because our economic institutions have historically emphasized decentralized decision-making, strong property rights, capital formation, and competition on the merits.

In recent years, antitrust enforcement has drifted away from economics and toward structural and precautionary theories that treat scale, integration, and market success as presumptive harms. Some of this shift mirrors Europe’s regulatory approach, and troublingly, the impulse to move in this direction is becoming bipartisan. The danger is that we abandon evidence-based competition policy, raise error costs, chill investment, and weaken long-run growth—at the very moment American firms are competing most intensely with China.
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In This Week’s Economy, I explain how we got here, what’s at stake for America’s leading tech firms, and what policymakers should do to ensure we defend competition without undermining the innovation that keeps America ahead. Check out my latest report, co-published with NetChoice, on choosing Innovation over Interference.

Originally published on Fox News. 

There are recent reports that the Trump administration is considering an executive order or Treasury action requiring banks to collect customers’ citizenship information. This could include collecting documents such as passports for existing customers, not just new account holders. That is not "tightening the rules." It is a sweeping expansion of federal data collection that will raise costs for banks and customers, shrink access to basic banking services and push more activity into the shadows.

The intention may be to address illegal immigration and tighten enforcement, but this approach treats banks like a substitute for a functioning immigration system. Washington’s struggle to consistently enforce immigration policy does not justify shifting the burden onto financial institutions and law-abiding Americans. Expanding government reach into private financial relationships is not a solution to immigration failures. Fixing immigration policy is. Offloading enforcement costs to banks is just another way politicians shift the blame and hide the price tag.

​Banks already operate under serious identity verification mandates. Federal Customer Identification Program requirements under 31 CFR 1020.220 require banks to collect identifying information and use risk-based procedures to verify identity so they can form a "reasonable belief" that they know the customer's true identity. Identity verification is already the law. This proposal adds a new, separate layer: citizenship classification at scale.

​That means unforeseen costs imposed on people who are already complying with the law. Banks will need new systems, new staff training, new vendors, new audits and new exception-handling processes for customers who cannot meet the new demands immediately. Compliance costs do not stay at the bank. They show up in higher fees, fewer low-cost accounts and worse service.

It also means more friction just to participate in the modern economy. A "citizenship information" mandate would make it harder for people to open accounts and could impose extensive new documentation obligations on existing customers. Put simply, this is a regulatory landmine. When regulators increase penalties for getting it wrong, banks are forced to become more conservative about whom they can serve and to do so at a higher cost.

That is how debanking gets worse. President Donald Trump’s executive order — Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans — sought to address the root cause of this very issue by pushing back on the governmental regulatory overreach that has driven account closures at financial institutions across the country. A new nationwide citizenship-data mandate would only turbocharge the same dynamics that force banks to close accounts rather than risk running afoul of compliance errors.

Now, the privacy problem. This proposal would require financial institutions to collect and transmit large amounts of highly sensitive personal information. The larger the dataset, the bigger the target. More collection and more transmission create more points of failure along with a greater risk of breach, internal misuse and mission creep. Once the federal government builds the pipeline, it will not be limited to the original justification.

Conservatives have pushed back for years against government intrusion into personal financial matters, including mandates that compel private disclosure to the government. The battle over beneficial ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act is a recent example of how quickly "anti-crime" justifications turn into broad surveillance architecture. Requiring banks to collect citizenship information on hundreds of millions of customers would be an even broader expansion of federal data collection than what small businesses were told to accept. 

And the burden will not be evenly distributed. Many Americans do not have passports or easy access to formal documentation. The Washington Post reports that roughly half the population lacks a passport, and banking industry experts warn that the requirement could restrict access to financial services and push people toward higher-cost options. Seniors, rural residents and lower-income individuals are the most likely to get caught in the gears. For rural communities, the challenge is worse because documentation offices and support services are farther away and harder to reach. 

That leads to the most self-defeating outcome of all: forcing people out of traditional banking. When compliance barriers rise, people do not stop earning, spending and saving. They route around the system. That means more cash-heavy activity and more informal transactions, making financial crime harder to detect and reducing transparency. This is why heavy-handed financial mandates often backfire. They can drive legitimate activity away from institutions where patterns can be monitored and toward channels where law enforcement sees less, not more.

This is not an argument for weak enforcement of existing law. It is an argument for doing enforcement the right way, using targeted tools aimed at bad actors, not building an ever-expanding registry through the banking system that sweeps up everyone else. Banks exist to safeguard deposits and allocate capital, not to become a nationwide citizenship checkpoint.

If Washington wants a more secure and lawful system, it should start with policies that increase compliance where it matters and reduce compliance burdens where it does not. This proposal does the opposite: it punishes the compliant, expands government reach and makes the system less transparent by pushing people away from it.

Originally published at The Center Square.

“Ban the middlemen” has become the easy applause line in healthcare politics. Tennessee’s version is SB 2040, which would prohibit pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) from owning, controlling, or holding any beneficial interest in pharmacies, including mail-order and specialty operations that ship into the state. 
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That sounds like a tough stand for “fairness.” But it’s a state-mandated corporate breakup that substitutes political judgment for competition – and risks making access worse for patients.

Some argue that this vertical integration creates conflicts of interest and steers patients toward certain providers. That concern deserves scrutiny. But banning a business model is not how effective markets work. Markets punish bad actors through profit and loss. Bans punish many patients by shrinking options and inviting costly disruption. 

CVS is warning that this “pharmacy closure bill” could result in the closure of 134 pharmacy locations in Tennessee. Other drug companies will likely close as well. Even if only half of those locations close, that would still be a massive disruption for a state with a large rural population. 

A law that can credibly trigger widespread business closures should set off alarm bells for anyone who claims to prioritize access. If lawmakers really want to reduce conflicts, they should target specific conduct rather than impose a blanket ownership ban. 

SB 2040 goes far beyond policing bad behavior. It attempts to centrally plan the market structure. Worse, this approach is already showing cracks in court. 

Arkansas tried a first-in-the-nation PBM ownership ban, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking it before it could take effect. Iowa’s broad PBM mandates also ran into legal trouble with a preliminary injunction against key provisions. 

Tennessee should pause before copying a policy trend that is increasingly unstable—and that may leave patients stuck in the middle of a legal and operational mess. 

Ultimately, Tennessee can’t fully fix drug pricing from Nashville, because so much of healthcare’s dysfunction is driven by poor federal policy. And drug expenses account for less than 10% of the more than $5 trillion in total healthcare spending, so focusing only on them won’t do much to empower patients or improve healthcare affordability. 

But Tennessee can provide a meaningful, free-market approach that expands supply, reduces barriers to care, and empowers pharmacists, who are the most accessible healthcare professionals in many communities. 

Instead of trying to “win” a headline battle against PBMs, lawmakers should pursue reforms that increase capacity and competition at the point of care. A strong blueprint already exists in a Beacon Center report, which focuses on removing state-level restrictions that limit what pharmacists can do and how efficiently pharmacies can operate.

Start with the workforce bottleneck. Tennessee’s restrictions on pharmacist-to-technician ratios were a classic example of anti-competitive micromanagement that reduced throughput, increased wait times, and raised operating costs. This restriction was reduced in 2024 through a ruling change, but not legislation, so it could come back. The state should eliminate state-imposed ratio caps and let pharmacists decide staffing based on real-world needs and safety. 

Next, reduce barriers that keep pharmacists from providing routine care. This includes cutting red tape that makes it harder for pharmacies to administer CLIA-waived tests, which are categorized as “simple laboratory examinations and procedures that have an insignificant risk of an erroneous result.” This was partially achieved in 2024, but the pharmacy must still file a form with the state after the federal waiver is approved. 

In addition, the state should expand services that meet community needs—especially when physician access is limited. More pharmacist-provided testing and treatment is not “scope creep.” It is supply expansion—more care options, closer to home, often at lower cost.

Tennessee can also simplify rules that require unnecessary agreements for routine services. This could be achieved by reducing bureaucratic hurdles around vaccinations and other common services so pharmacists can respond to public health needs without jumping through paperwork hoops that add cost but not safety.

If Tennessee wants lower costs and better access, it should increase the supply of care and reduce state barriers—not try to restructure ownership in a federally distorted drug market and hope prices fall. There have been positive efforts in this direction in Tennessee over the last few years, but more work is needed. 

SB 2040 is a political shortcut. It creates a new layer of state control, risks pharmacy closures, and may end up tangled in litigation—while doing little to address the real constraints Tennesseans feel every day. A better approach is based on free-market principles: stop chasing villains, stop banning business models, and start removing Tennessee’s own obstacles to competition.