By restoring clarity and rigor to antitrust enforcement, the incoming administration can protect competition without punishing success.
By restoring clarity and rigor to antitrust enforcement, the incoming administration can protect competition without punishing success.
A s Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term, his administration must change the direction of America’s antitrust policy.
Over the past four years, antitrust enforcement has become unmoored from its economic foundations, driven instead by ideological zeal and political opportunism. The result? A policy that leaves businesses in limbo, consumers worse off, and innovation at risk.
For decades, American antitrust policy rested on a clear goal: promoting consumer welfare through sound economic analysis. That approach made the U.S. a world leader in thoughtful and rigorous antitrust. But the Biden administration abandoned this consensus, wielding antitrust law as a weapon to punish corporate success. The results have been predictably chaotic.
The Biden administration’s antitrust ambitions first came to the fore in its aggressive approach to mergers, particularly in the technology sector. Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) quickly suffered a series of embarrassing losses in court, failing in its efforts to block mergers such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and Meta’s acquisition of Within. Yet the administration pressed on, introducing new merger guidelines that broke with decades of legal precedent and economic understanding.
Proponents of this crackdown argue that “tougher” enforcement was overdue. But academic research tells a different story: Merger enforcement has steadily intensified since the 1980s, and there’s little evidence linking mergers to increased industry concentration. The administration’s overreach has only discouraged beneficial mergers, dampening efficiency and innovation — ultimately hurting consumers.
Beyond mergers, the administration has pursued high-profile monopolization cases against tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, and Meta. These cases, critics argue, rest on a fundamental misreading of market dynamics.
Take the FTC’s case against Amazon, which antitrust scholar Daniel Crane has labeled the “weakest government case” in recent memory, based on a survey of antitrust experts. The suit hinges on claims of market dominance that ignore Amazon’s constant innovation and its fierce competition with other retailers, both online and offline.
Similarly, the Justice Department’s case against Apple and the FTC’s challenge to Meta have drawn skepticism. These cases treat size and market leadership as inherently problematic, overlooking the consumer benefits these companies provide and the intense competition they face from emerging players.
The DOJ’s late September lawsuit against Visa illustrates the dangers of this approach.
The government accused Visa of monopolizing the debit-card market, despite the wide array of debit-card providers and rapid growth of fintech competitors such as Apple Pay, PayPal, and Venmo. Visa’s share of the traditional card market is already under pressure as electronic payments gain ground.
The DOJ alleges that Visa engaged in anticompetitive practices, such as paying rivals to stay out of the market. Yet Apple, accused of being a co-conspirator, has flatly denied the existence of any such arrangement. Apple first launched a debit-card partnership with Discover in 2017, then switched to Visa in 2022, apparently because Visa’s capabilities make it easier for Apple to scale its service, especially internationally. That looks more like sound decision making than a conspiracy.
Meanwhile, the DOJ’s antitrust crusade against Google centers on its dominance in search and digital advertising. But here, too, market forces are already reshaping the landscape. Google’s share of desktop search has declined by ten percentage points over the past six years, As soon as next year, Google’s share of the U.S. search advertising market might fall under 50 percent, which would mark its lowest share in a decade. The DOJ scored a narrow victory in the search case, but it likely would have lost had the terms of Google’s contracts with Apple and others been less than three years.
The core problem with Biden-era antitrust policy is its ideological underpinning. Antitrust laws are intentionally broad, allowing enforcers to adapt to changing markets. But the Biden administration has used this flexibility to advance an anti-business agenda, dismissing economic principles, such as the consumer welfare standard, in favor of personal agendas.
The United States once led the world in principled antitrust enforcement, promoting competition while fostering innovation. Under Biden, we’ve veered toward the European model of micromanaging successful companies — a model that has stifled growth and left European consumers with fewer choices. Apple’s decision to withhold certain features from European markets due to regulatory constraints is a cautionary tale.
The Trump administration has a chance to reverse course. By restoring clarity and rigor to antitrust enforcement, it can protect competition without punishing success. America’s economic dynamism depends on it.