As Biden’s Antitrust Chief Exits, Will Trump Keep the Momentum?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2024 – The Biden administration’s top competition enforcement officer is leaving Friday with some tough words for the giant companies he tried to corral: "Plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship," said Jonathan Kanter in his farewell address Tuesday to end his three-year tenure as assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's antitrust division. 

He urged vigilance in combating unchecked corporate power. “When companies larger, wealthier, and more powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our way of life," he said.

Kanter, who argued “exploitation of market power had become more threatening to our democratic institutions since the Gilded Age,” is leaving behind a Justice Department that, under his leadership, ramped up antitrust enforcement to levels not seen in decades.

The DOJ’s antitrust division litigated the largest number of civil antitrust cases in decades, according to Kanter, and is currently litigating six civil cases simultaneously, the most in 20 years. And, in 2022, the division litigated more merger trials than in any previous fiscal year on record, he said.

Among the division's most high-profile victories was a groundbreaking legal win over Google. The DOJ’s Google Search case specifically targeted Google's alleged illegal monopolization of the online search and search advertising markets. 

Google Search was the first monopolization case litigated by the antitrust division in over 20 years and the second major Section 2 victory in nearly 50 years. The division also pursued cases against Apple, Meta, Ticketmaster, and Visa.

Until President-elect Donald Trump takes office, Kanter's deputy Doha Mekki will lead the antitrust division. After Trump’s inauguration, he has said he wants Gail Slater to head the DoJ’s antitrust division.

Trump’s prior DOJ antitrust division offered a mixed record, including its unsuccessful opposition to the vertical merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which the agency argued would harm competition by giving AT&T too much control over content distribution. Notably, the Google search case, brought under Kanter’s leadership, was originally filed during Trump’s first administration. 

Looking ahead, President-elect Donald Trump has signaled a renewed focus on taking on Big Tech during his second term. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump declared that "Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector.”

Advocacy groups are urging the DOJ and FTC to scrutinize some pending mergers in the telecom sector, including the proposed T-Mobile-UScellular merger and Verizon's $20 billion bid for Frontier Communications, arguing deals would exacerbate existing concerns over limited competition and consumer choice.

Still, analysts at New Street Research have predicted the Frontier and UScellular deals would ultimately get the Justice Department's – and the Federal Communications Commission's – greenlight regardless of who won the presidential election.

Kanter closed his farewell with a stark warning: “Our democratic experiment will not succeed if a few powerful companies and individuals dominate our economy.”