consumer

Live Nation, the ticketing giant that reached a tentative settlement with the Department of Justice last week, remains under fire.

A coalition of more than 30 states that had joined the original lawsuit filed in 2024 is refusing to accept the $200-million settlement, causing the trial to resume this week in Manhattan’s Federal Court.

The settlement with the Justice Department requires Beverly Hills-based Live Nation to open Ticketmaster to rival ticket sellers, force the company to open select venues to competing promoters and cap service fees at 15%. California is one of the key states still involved in the trial.

But those steps fall short, critics say.

“It’s clear that Live Nation has manipulated the market and made itself untouchable by competitors, hurting artists, hurting fans, hurting venues, all the while, raking in the cash,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta at the Capitol Forum conference last week. “Not because it’s a better service or product, because it acted illegally and created a monopoly.”

U.S. senators have also chimed in. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar recently introduced the Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act to strengthen the review of antitrust settlements. Klobuchar said in a release that it’s “clear the American people got the raw end of the deal.”

And Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal released a report that provides new details into the inner workings of Ticketmaster and urges attorneys general across the nation to reject the settlement.

Blumenthal said that the Trump administration’s settlement with Live Nation will keep consumers vulnerable to Ticketmaster’s “anticompetitive practices” and ultimately push “concert tickets farther out of reach for fans.”

The senator’s report, entitled “So Casually Cruel: How Ticketmaster’s Monopoly Supercharges Prices and Fees,” examined over 100,000 documents and Ticketmaster’s revenue data. The report argues that the company leveraged its market control to make tickets available on the resale market before they were available to the general public in an effort to hike prices and boost profits.

“The ticketing market is broken,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

In its own statement, Ticketmaster said Blumenthal’s report “misrepresents how the live events industry works” and that the problem lies in the secondary ticketing industry.

“This is why we’ve long called for industry resale reform, including price caps, while also developing tools to empower artists and protect fans,” Ticketmaster said in a statement.

Recently, Ticketmaster has backed ticketing bills like AB-1349 and advocated to Congress for an industry-wide resale cap.

Sens. Blumenthal and Klobuchar are among many industry experts who say the settlement doesn’t adequately address anticompetitive practices and falls short of protecting consumers from high ticket prices.

Under Klobuchar’s new bill, courts could have 90 days to review public comments and government responses.

“When the government prosecutes antitrust violations, the goal should be to uphold the law, lower prices, and protect consumers and small businesses,” Klobuchar said in the statement.

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the economic policy nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, said the settlement will end up being “incredibly costly for concertgoers, performers, and independent venues.”

“California and 35 other states are standing up for Americans who are sick and tired of being ripped off and having to scrimp and save to enjoy a night out,” Owens said in a statement.

This ongoing trial is one of several major legal battles the ticketing giant is facing. The company is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission and is dealing with a handful of class-action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

After years of ticketing complaints and frustrations, the trial for the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation is officially underway.

As part of its case, the DOJ has accused Live Nation of requiring artists to use its promotional services when they play a Live Nation-owned venue. Because so many venues are owned by the company, the government claims Live Nation’s alleged practices are anti-competitive.

Jury selection began Monday in a New York federal court and opening statements are expected Tuesday for the complaint first filed in 2024. Since then, the antitrust case against the Beverly Hills-based company has been streamlined — examining whether Live Nation uses illegal anti-competitive practices and whether the company and Ticketmaster should be broken up.

The legal proceeding is expected to last around a month, with Judge Arun Subramanian, who also presided over Sean Combs’ sentencing last year, at the helm.

Live Nation’s presidents Michael Rapino and Joe Berchtold, executives from competing companies like Anschutz Entertainment Group and Irving Azoff, the former Ticketmaster CEO, are expected to testify. Musicians like Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons and entertainer Kid Rock could also take the stand.

Key claims in the lawsuit

The original lawsuit led by a cadre of interested parties including the federal government, 39 states and the District of Columbia alleged that Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster have monopolies in various aspects of the live music industry, such as concert promotion, venue operations, artist management and ticketing services.

The lawsuit states that Live Nation manages over 400 artists and controls more than 265 venues in North America. Ticketmaster simultaneously controls around 80% of the primary ticket marketplace and is also increasing its involvement in the resale market.

Many of the large monopoly claims were thrown out during a pretrial hearing with Judge Subramanian last month, including an allegation that Live Nation’s industry power raises ticket prices and harms consumers.

The claim with arguably the greatest potential impact centers on whether Live Nation should own Ticketmaster. The two companies merged in 2010, a move that has frequently been considered controversial. Beyond the ownership of Ticketmaster, the DOJ claims Live Nation forces venues to sign exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster, barring the inclusion of other ticket vendors.

“For over a decade, Ticketmaster and Live Nation have promised reform, but meaningful competition has remained out of reach. The industry now stands at an inflection point: restore a competitive marketplace that supports innovation, or allow the status quo to continue narrowing options for American consumers,” Dustin Brighton of the Coalition for Ticket Fairness said in a statement.

“Yet the very competitors that could check this monopoly and restore balance are routinely boxed out by restrictive practices that limit innovation and reduce consumer options,” Brighton added.

Live Nation did not respond to a request for comment. When the complaint was first filed, the company called the claims “baseless.”

“Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment,” wrote Live Nation in a previous statement.

Next steps after the trial

If Live Nation loses the trial, the judge will decide how the company should be restructured, which could mean selling Ticketmaster to a competitor. Live Nation maintains the right to appeal such a decision, if it materializes, and take the matter to a higher court.

“If the court finds Live Nation violated the law, monetary penalties and behavioral commitments alone will not be sufficient,” Stephen Parker, executive director of the Independent Venue Association, said in a statement.

“The relief must be proportionate to the harm,” Parker added, “and that means structural separation of primary ticketing, resale ticketing, venue operation, national tours, advertising/sponsorship, and artist management must be seriously considered.”

Beyond the current DOJ trial, Live Nation is also facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and a handful of class action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

California’s landmark single-use plastic law is slowly being eroded by pressures within the state. Now legal attacks from outside threaten to kneecap it entirely.

Earlier this month, a federal district court judge in Oregon put parts of its single-use plastic law, which is similar to California’s, on hold while he decides whether it violates antitrust and consumer protection laws.

At the same time, 10 Republican attorneys general sent letters directly to companies that are taking part in plastic reduction campaigns, telling them to stop.

They threatened legal action against Costco, Unilever, Coca-Cola and 75 other companies for participating in the Plastic Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. These efforts all include industry as an active partner in reducing plastics, but the letters say the companies are colluding against consumers “to remove products from the market without considering consumer demand, product effectiveness, or the cost and impact on consumers of a replacement product.”

Charges of corporate collusion and conspiracy are central to both cases.

Anti-waste advocates and attorneys well versed in packaging say the lawsuit and the letters to Costco and the other companies highlight vulnerabilities in several of California’s waste laws, including the seminal Senate Bill 54 — the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. At issue are what are known as Extended Producer Responsibility laws.

These put the cost of cleanup and waste disposal on the companies that make materials — plastic, paint or carpet — rather than on consumers, cities and municipalities.

In 2024, a report from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta estimated that collectively, the state’s cities spend more than $1 billion each year on litter management. In 2023, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic (or 171.4 billion pieces) were sold or distributed, according to one state analysis.

These producer responsibility laws emphasize the idea of “circular economy”: that the producer of a material must consider its fate — making sure it can be reused or recycled, or at least reduced.

The laws organize companies into entities, called Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs), that generally oversee the management of the laws, set fees and collect them from members.

In the Oregon lawsuit, the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors alleges a state-sanctioned product responsibility organization levied fees on trade group members that were onerous and opaque.

“Their fee structure was designed in secret by board members of the PRO,” said Eric Hoplin, president and chief executive of the group.

“Oregon is attempting to build a statewide recycling system by granting vast authority to a private entity to impose what amount to hidden taxes on businesses and consumers,” said Brian Wild, chief government relations officer for the wholesalers. “This law raises prices, shields decision-making from scrutiny, and advantages large, vertically integrated companies at the expense of smaller competitors.”

The group he references, the Circular Action Alliance, is the same one that oversees California’s single-use plastic law. Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, General Mills and Procter & Gamble are part of it.

Others, however, say California’s laws are strong.

People shop at Costco in Glendale, Calif., on April 10.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

“Extended Producer Responsibility laws are public policies passed by legislatures and implemented with government oversight,” said Heidi Sanborn, the executive director and CEO of the National Stewardship Action Council, which advocates for the laws and a more circular economy.

She helped craft many of California’s waste laws, including SB 54 and was also involved in Oregon’s law. “They create clear, consistent rules so all producers contribute fairly to the cost of recycling and waste management,” she said.

Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), who wrote SB 54, said California’s plastic bill was designed to avoid violating antitrust laws.

CalRecycle declined to comment.

Some advocates actually hope the California laws fall. They include Jan Dell, of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic group based in Laguna Beach.

Extended Producer Responsibility “programs are based on the false premise that plastic is recyclable and are counterproductive because they green wash plastics and preempt proven solutions like strategic bans on the worst forms of plastic pollution (e.g. single use bags, six pack rings),” Dell wrote in an email.

Even those, however, can be problematic if they’re not enforced. Dell pointed to SB 54’s de facto ban on polystyrene, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

“There is still Styrofoam stuff sold in 250 Smart and Final stores across the state!” she said. “It is totally noncredible and outrageous to claim that CalRecycle will ever enforce regulations on thousands of types of packaging when they can’t enforce the regulations on JUST ONE!”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has a way of saying the quiet parts out loud in defending President Trump’s economic policies, told the truth again Friday, during a public appearance a few hours after the Supreme Court threw out most of Trump’s tariffs.

Asked about the prospects that Americans would be receiving refunds of the illegal tariffs paid since Trump imposed them in April, Bessent replied with a condescending smirk: “I get a feeling the American people won’t see it.”

A couple of things about that. One is that there doesn’t seem to be any legal question that those who paid the tariffs are entitled to refunds. In his 6-3 ruling invalidating levies imposed on imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA, Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that those tariffs were unconstitutional and illegal from their inception.

Therefore, there’s no excuse for the government to hold on to the money it has collected — estimated at somewhere between $135 billion and $170 billion. But Roberts didn’t state whether refunds are warranted or, if so, how they should be calculated and distributed.

Trump has dangled the prospect of tariff refunds — actually, tariff “dividend” checks of $2,000 — in front of taxpayers for months. In effect, that would mean returning to taxpayers the money that his tariffs have cost them. Bessent’s comments put paid to that promise.

Today, no one is arguing seriously that checks should be cut for taxpayers — except Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer, who demanded refund checks totalling $8.7 billion for his constituents. But that has the aroma of a campaign stunt for Pritzker, who is running for a third term and may be positioning himself for a presidential run.

By not specifying a refund process, the Supreme Court decision left a vacuum that Bessent tried to fill. In his comments, he explained why refunds will be nothing but a dream for the average American — and those comments were chilling.

First, he said, Trump has the authority to reimpose the same tariffs under different laws. Indeed, Trump has already announced that he will be imposing 15% tariffs across the board.

He also signaled that although Roberts pushed refund decisions down to the Court of International Trade, the government is poised to challenge importers’ applications for reimbursement, generating litigation that “can be dragged out for weeks, months, years.”

In other words, Bessent implied that, far from resolving the economic confusion Trump has generated through his on-again-off-again tariff policies during 2025, the court’s decision provoked Trump to inject even more uncertainty into U.S. trade relations and domestic business decisions.

That dime appeared to drop for stock market investors Monday. The markets rose modestly in a relief rally Friday after the Supreme Court released its decision, but tumbled Monday as Trump doubled down on tariffs. At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was down by 821.91 points, or nearly 1.7%, and the Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500 indices both fell by more than 1%.

Bessent didn’t mention the most important reason why American consumers are unlikely to see anything resembling a tariff refund.

Tariffs on imported products are, by any measure, a tax on domestic consumers. Economic opinion is virtually unanimous on that point. As I reported in January, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, concluded that 96% of the 2025 Trump tariffs were paid by American importers and their domestic clients.

“The tariffs are, in the most literal sense, an own goal,” Kiel’s researchers wrote. “Americans are footing the bill.” Their conclusion was largely echoed earlier this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which placed the burden on American importers and consumers at “nearly 90%.”

That said, the specifics of tariff payments are in the hands of importers and retailers, which keep records of how much they’ve paid and on what products or parts. Consumers don’t normally know the numbers. (I actually received an invoice last year breaking out the tariffs charged by a Japanese retailer on a set of pens I had bought for a birthday present, but since the sum came to $12 I’m not sure that demanding a refund from the government would be worth it.)

So far, about 1,500 businesses have filed claims for refunds through the Court of International Trade. Most filed these claims to secure for themselves a position in the scrum for refunds, like music fans lining up overnight for tickets to a star’s upcoming concert.

Many of these businesses may not actually have put a number on their claim. Costco, perhaps the biggest retailer to file with the CIT, didn’t say in its Nov. 28 filing how much it thought it was owed, possibly because it was still bound to pay the tariffs until the Supreme Court issued a final decision.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which actually computes and collects the tariffs, says it will cease collecting the invalidated levies when the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning.

What consumers don’t know is how much of the tariffs have been passed down to them. Some sellers decided to eat some or all of the tariffs to keep consumer prices steady. Some may have stocked up on tariff-eligible products ahead of the formal imposition of the levies.

Will retailers seek out customers who paid higher prices on products that were tariffed to hand them refunds? None has said that such an eventuality is in the cards, though it might not be surprising to see some businesses use the end of tariffs as a marketing device — you know, “We’re cutting prices on Toyotas during ‘tariff freedom month!’” etc., etc.

It’s also conceivable that retailers passed imaginary tariff costs on to their customers, putting through price increases that had nothing to do with the levies but could be blamed on them anyway.

That’s what happened after Trump imposed tariffs on washing machines, which were almost all foreign-made, in 2018. According to a 2020 survey by Federal Reserve and University of Chicago economists, the tariffs forced washing machine prices up by nearly 12%, or about $86 each. The researchers discovered, however, that prices on clothes dryers increased by about the same amount, even though they weren’t subject to the tariffs at all.

What happened? The researchers conjectured that because washers and dryers are typically sold as pairs, retailers may have simply spread the washing machine cost increase between the two products to keep their prices similar. It’s also possible that retailers, figuring that consumers would expect to pay more for tariffed washing machines and would assume the same effect held for dryers, charged more for the latter to fatten their profits. One wouldn’t expect consumer refunds in those cases.

Another imponderable is the effect of Trump’s tariffs on the U.S. consumer economy generally. The Trump tariffs cost the average American household the equivalent of a tax increase of about $1,000, the Tax Foundation has calculated.

About $600 of that sum was due to the IEEPA tariffs now struck down. But the new tariffs Trump announced after the Supreme Court ruling will raise the tariff tax for American families by $300 to $700, the Foundation reported — potentially a greater total burden than existed before the court’s action.

All of Trump’s tariffs increased the average tariff rate to 13.8%, the Foundation reckoned. The Supreme Court’s ruling reduced that to about 6% — still the highest U.S. tariff rate since 1971 — but the new 15% tariff Trump announced would raise the applied rate back to 12.1%. By law, the new tariff can remain in effect for only five months unless it’s extended by Congress. In 2022, America’s applied tariff rate was 1.5%.

Perhaps the most immediate question facing businesses is how refund claims will be administered. In his dissent to Roberts’ IEEPA decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “the refund process is likely to be a ‘mess.’”

Possibly Kavanaugh’s concern was that the Court of International Trade will have to adjudicate 1,500 claims one by one. But it need not be so.

In 1998, the Supreme Court declared a Harbor Maintenance Tax on exports, based on the constitutional provision that exports can’t be taxed. Responsibility for those refunds also fell to the Court of International Trade, which established a standardized procedure for claims. Even under the streamlined system, however, the resolution of all those claims took until 2005, or seven years. And that involved only about $1 billion in claims, not the more than $130 billion at stake today.

What remains unexplained in the miasma created by Trump’s tariff policies is why he is doing this. None of his rationales has been borne out. The tariffs haven’t restored manufacturing employment in the U.S., which have fallen throughout Trump’s current term. They haven’t eliminated America’s trade deficit with the rest of the world, which has persisted since 1975 and — despite Trump’s assertions — isn’t anywhere close to an economic crisis.

As it happens, while the overall trade deficit fell modestly last year by less than $3 billion, or about one-third of 1%, most of the reduction was in services; the deficit in goods rose by $25.5 billion to a record $1.24 trillion.

All that’s left is Trump’s inclination to wield tariffs as tools of geopolitical bullying. He has raised or threatened to raise tariffs on Brazil because of that country’s criminal pursuit of former President Jair Bolsonaro for leading a coup attempt; on Switzerland because he felt dissed by a Swiss government leader; and on several European countries for thwarting his effort to annex Greenland.

None of those actions bore fruit (Bolsonaro was convicted and is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence). America’s trading partners plainly recognize that the new tariffs must expire within 150 days and can’t be renewed without action by a Congress plainly queasy about giving Trump his tariffs back after the Supreme Court took them away. They don’t seem to be taking Trump seriously.

They can tell that on tariffs, as on many other things, Trump is increasingly behaving like a lame duck, albeit one with a whim of iron. But as the stock market seemed to be telling us Monday, even a whim of iron can be very, very costly.