The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) presented Senator Richard Blumenthal the 2022 Alfred E. Kahn Award for Antitrust Achievement today at AAI’s 23rd Annual Policy Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Listen to Senator Blumenthal’s remarks here.
AAI President Diana Moss stated “We are delighted to grant this award to Senator Blumenthal. His career-long work and commitment to fair competition has had demonstrable, positive impact on our markets, consumers, and workers. The Senator is a model for how the legislative branch can play a vital role in shaping strong antitrust enforcement and coherent competition policy.”
Among other committee assignments, Senator Blumenthal is a member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation, and chairs the Consumer Protection Subcommittee. As former Attorney General for the state of Connecticut, where he played a leading role among the states that sued Microsoft in 1998, and in serving in the Senate for over a decade, Senator Blumenthal is a strong proponent of vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws.
For decades, Senator Blumenthal has worked to strengthen U.S. antitrust law to limit harmful conduct by dominant firms, to prevent illegal mergers, and to ensure that the antitrust laws protect consumers and workers that are harmed by anticompetitive consolidation and conduct.
As a long-standing member of the Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, Senator Blumenthal has been an integral part, as a sponsor and co-sponsor, of numerous legislative proposals to strengthen and modernize antitrust law and competition policy and to draw attention to anticompetitive practices and mergers. This Congress, for example, Senator Blumenthal led the introduction of the Open App Markets Act, which would create clear, enforceable rules to protect competition and consumers within the app market. AAI has supported a number of Senator Blumenthal’s sponsored and co-sponsored bills as vital to the mission of revitalizing antitrust enforcement in the U.S.
The AAI Alfred E. Kahn Award for Antitrust Achievement, first presented in 2000, honors outstanding contributions to the field of antitrust. Senator Blumenthal joins the following past honorees: Joel Klein, Robert Pitofsky, F.M. Scherer, Alfred E. Kahn, Lloyd Constantine, Thomas B. Leary, Senators Herb Kohl and Mike DeWine, Maxwell Blecher, John Shenefield, Eleanor M. Fox, Steven Salop, Mario Monti, Roger G. Noll, Kathleen Foote, John M. Connor, Donald I. Baker, Jonathan W. Cuneo, William Baer, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Stephen Calkins , Albert A. Foer, and Robert Skitol.
