{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-op-ed-for-the-financial-times-breaking-up-concentrated-economic-power-must-be-a-foreign-policy-priority", "Murphy Op-Ed For The Financial Times: Breaking Up Concentrated Economic Power Must Be A Foreign Policy Priority", "2024-10-29", "2024", "2024-10", "Democrat", "Senate", "CT", "Christopher Murphy", "M001169", "www.murphy.senate.gov", "chrismurphy", "https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON\u2014U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday authored an op-ed for the Financial Times arguing that American foreign and domestic policies must align to break up concentrated economic power and revitalize local communities. Pointing to the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s work to break up corporate monopolies, rebuild local economies, and create a new industrial policy, Murphy called for America\u2019s foreign policy to be similarly reshaped.\n\nMurphy described how the Biden-Harris Administration\u2019s decision at the World Trade Organization to block new data transit rules reflects a larger effort to combat the consequences of neoliberalism: \u201cThey saw the negotiations through the prism of America\u2019s twin crises of alienation and the concentration of economic power. While all the key economic indicators point to a country that has bounced back from the pandemic, rates of addiction, self-harm and political extremism continue to rise as more Americans report feeling unhappy and disconnected from their communities. This alienation is the wreckage left in the wake of a half century of shared, bipartisan faith in economic neoliberalism \u2014 the doctrine that unrestricted free trade and market forces would best uphold the public good. The unchecked gobbling up of economic power by a few large corporations has left us with broken supply chains and uncompetitive markets.\u201d\n\nMurphy underscored the need for a post-neoliberal foreign policy that aims to break up concentrated global economic power, protect fair trade, and breathe life back into local communities: \u201cTrade agreements should be put to a simple test: will the terms concentrate or distribute private economic power? When new rules clearly give large global companies too much power over workers and citizens in individual nation states, then the answer must be to rewrite or reject them, as demonstrated by Tai. A post-neoliberal foreign policy must also challenge the ability of state-run economies to rig the rules of the global marketplace. Too often US foreign policy is focused on military threats. Yes, China and Russia present conventional military threats to global order; but America must expend equal effort on confronting our adversaries\u2019 growing economic influence. This should involve speeding up renewable energy adoption to weaken the power of Russia and other petro-dictatorships and continued work to contest Chinese dominance of critical supply chains for products such as solar panels or advanced batteries.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur foreign policy must also buttress growing bipartisan efforts to create a new industrial and commercial approach rooted in localism,\u201d Murphy continued. \u201cAmericans do not want to be part of a homogenized, flattened global economy. They want vibrant local economies where worker power is prioritized over shareholder power, community wellness prevails over the cult of efficiency, and values such as generosity and fairness matter more than greed and excess. Through carefully constructed tariffs and subsidies for domestic manufacturing and research and development, foreign and trade policy can be the vehicle for this change.\u201d\n\nMurphy concluded: \u201cAmericans will continue to lose faith in their country\u2019s democracy if we do not marry foreign and domestic policy in an effort to prioritize the common good over shameless profit-seeking. That decision at the WTO to rethink global data rules offers proof that the Biden-Harris administration understands the scale of the crisis the America faces and that it has laid the foundations of a coherent way forward for US foreign policy. The next generation of national security leaders must now build on and finish this work.\u201d\n\nRead the full op-ed here.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:57:20Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.murphy.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/murphy-op-ed-for-the-financial-times-breaking-up-concentrated-economic-power-must-be-a-foreign-policy-priority"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8996037542819977, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}