Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the New Spectator USA website.

I'm joined today by Barry Lynn, who is the director of the Open Markets Institute and the author of

Cornered, the new monopoly capitalism and the economics of destruction. And we're going to be

talking about Amazon and the news today that they will not be establishing a headquarters,

a corporate headquarters in New York. Barry, what was your reaction when you heard this news?

Well, I was pleasantly surprised by the news.

I was surprised that it happened so soon.

I was actually not that surprised that it happened.

I thought it would take a little bit longer.

So I was actually expecting that this would probably not come to pass.

And so you shared the reaction of Alexandria Ocasia Cortez, who saw it as a sort of triumph

of community over big business?

Yeah, and I think it's just the people of the United States have gotten to the point where the idea of subsidizing

the business of the world's richest man is something they're no longer willing to do.

Yes. And it struck me as a sort of non-left winger. It struck me as a pretty disgusting example

of crony capitalism.

I mean, essentially, Amazon had thrown a tantrum because New York City were not willing to

offer them about $3 billion in incentives to move their headquarters to New York.

Is that what you think happened?

Yeah, I mean, it's actually bad form on the part of Amazon.

I mean, I thought that what they would end up doing is saying, hey, you know what, we really

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