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.