On paper, President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers couldn’t look more different. One is a progressive activist, the other is a multimillionaire corporate attorney.
While their public brands may differ, their end goals remain the same: providing political cover for Biden on the campaign trail. Republican lawmakers should continue to expose how Biden’s politicized antitrust agenda wastes taxpayer resources and harms taxpayers.
Antitrust law gives government bureaucrats the power to break up companies that are harming competition. For the last 50 years, the government has not sued a company on antitrust grounds unless the company is harming consumers through higher prices, reduced innovation, or lower quality. Progressives want antitrust enforcers to abandon this test, called the consumer welfare standard, in favor of bureaucrats breaking up companies that are “too big,” companies that win in the marketplace over their rivals, or companies that don’t adhere to the social justice vision of the regulators who seek to remake them.
Enter Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, a 35-year-old progressive activist who took over the FTC after her bait-and-switch Senate confirmation. Khan’s background includes working for the George Soros-funded Open Markets Institute and falsely claiming the title of “counsel” as a Capitol Hill staffer without being a practicing attorney. Khan rose to prominence in progressive circles arguing for the government to break up Amazon, a longtime Biden political foe, in a law school paper.
Khan has been remarkably forthright about her plans to remake the economy in service of progressive policy goals. Khan has said that the government needs to do more to “shape economic outcomes,” and argued that the free market is a product of “metaphysical forces.” Khan’s deputy, FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, has dreamed about using antitrust to advance a “diversity, inclusion, and anti-racist” antitrust agenda.
The beltway media, eager to maintain access to the Biden administration, has consistently depicted Khan as a starry-eyed reformer dedicated to taking on greedy corporations. The establishment media generally depicts Khan’s counterpart, Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division Chief Jonathan Kanter, as a sober-minded adult in the room. For his part, the multimillionaire Kanter laughably asserts that he “represents the people of the United States of America.”
Does Kanter represent the American people, or is he shilling for his former clients on the taxpayer dime? Evidence points to the latter. Before helming the Antitrust Division, Kanter represented Spotify, Match, Yelp, and several members of the so-called “Coalition for App Fairness.” It just so happens that the lawsuits Kanter has launched at DOJ would benefit his former clients to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
Kanter also embraces social-justice warrior antitrust enforcement. Kanter’s lawsuit against Apple cites the “social stigma” of Android message bubbles appearing green on iPhones as a reason for antitrust cops to step in. Kanter is orchestrating Biden’s gambit to buy the votes of Taylor Swift fans by suing to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Khan and Kanter may have differences in public perception, but their goal is one and the same: providing political cover for Biden’s re-election campaign. Biden has often blamed economic turbulence on “corporate greed” and baselessly accuses large companies like Amazon of being tax cheats. In turn, Khan and Kanter sue the companies that Biden attacks on the campaign trail to prove that the administration is “taking on” corporate greed.
While Biden benefits politically, taxpayers are left holding the bag. Antitrust enforcement untethered from the consumer welfare standard allows bureaucrats to sue companies for political reasons, not consumer benefit. Khan and Kanter’s aggressive anti-merger posture has chilled the startup ecosystem, discouraging entrepreneurs from working hard to turn good ideas into great companies. The ultimate goal is to put every company in a “Mother-May-I” position with the federal government, putting faceless bureaucrats in charge of every facet of the economy.
House and Senate Republicans have worked tirelessly to expose Biden’s weaponization of antitrust law, particularly in Khan’s FTC. Lawmakers have investigated plummeting agency morale, FTC targeting of Elon Musk, the Department of Justice and the FTC colluding with foreign regulators to undermine American companies, Khan’s use of unpaid left-wing consultants, and more. Congress should build on this great work by examining areas where Khan may have lied to lawmakers while under oath, as well as probing Kanter’s well-documented conflicts of interest.
Khan and Kanter are looking out for Biden’s re-election prospects, not taxpayers. Lawmakers should continue to hold them accountable.
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Tom Hebert is Director of Competition and Regulatory Policy and executive director of the Open Competition Center.