Trump administration faces antitrust enforcement dilemma

Source: Roll Call

Posted November 8, 2024 at 2:15pm


Donald Trump will inherit a Biden administration legacy of aggressive antitrust enforcement through the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission — an approach that legal experts said Trump himself sowed in his first term and has split his party over the last four years.

The Biden administration has major antitrust litigation against tech giants like Google and Apple, credit card company Visa, as well as concert venue company LiveNation and real estate company Realpage. At the same time, the Biden administration’s approach has repeatedly riled some in Trump’s camp, particularly FTC Chair Lina Khan.

Rebecca Allensworth, an antitrust law professor at Vanderbilt University, said that Trump has not been a “traditional” Republican around antitrust and competition issues, particularly in his criticism of large tech companies. “It’s not as if there’s this clean story where Trump is pro-business. Trump is a typical Republican, where he’s going to be very laissez faire, and Biden comes in with Bidenomics, vindicating more kind of populist goals. And then when we go to Trump, we’re going to go back to the laissez faire,” Allensworth said.

Those conflicts could play out in the first few months of the administration as acting officials make decisions around existing antitrust lawsuits and the White House pushes to confirm officials at the Justice Department and FTC.

Read more: https://rollcall.com/2024/11/08/trump-administration-faces-antitrust-enforcement-dilemma/