The Biden Administration’s Potential Push Against Big Tech
Joe Biden faces many issues as President, chief among them the outsized power of big tech in the USA. Source.
Big tech, which keeps getting Bigger and Bigger, had a wonderful 2020 and looks to continue in 2021 as COVID-19 continues to define how people live their lives. Just last week, the CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter faced questioning in front of Congress about various parts of their business, with all the questioning seemingly accelerating calls for regulation of Big tech. Taking it a step further than regulation, several Democratic primary candidates included antitrust enforcement against Big Tech in their campaign platforms, although President Biden was not one of them.
However, still in his first 100 days, Biden appears to have included antitrust enforcement in his platform as President. He has appointed various anti-monopoly figures to prominent roles in the administration, such as Lina Khan and Tim Wu. Lina Khan is a legal academic who the administration has nominated to occupy a seat on the Federal Trade Commission(FTC), which still does not have a chairperson. Khan is seen as a key figure in the anti-monopoly movement, rising to national academic recognition after publishing a 2017 paper, as a student at Yale Law School, titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”, which has been described as “reframing decades of monopoly law”. Her work points to the kind of commissioner she will be, having written about taking action that goes further than breaking up individual companies, action she describes as “using all the tools in the antimonopoly toolbox”. Khan will be taking up one of the five commissioner roles for the FTC, with another open spot for the administration to fill. If confirmed, she will be one of the three Democrats, with the Biden administration having to appoint a chairperson soon. If an antitrust supporter is chosen, Khan and the team could use their abilities to define fair competition and block mergers in new ways.
There is still a ways to go, with 2 of the 4 commissioners on the FTC including Khan holding a more lenient approach when it comes to Big Tech and antitrust laws. The Biden Administration also has yet to appoint an assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, who would lead any potential novel moves made by the FTC or other executive agencies into potential monopolies. Merrick Garland’s appointment as attorney general doesn’t clear up the picture much, as he has ruled in no particular pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant manner as a judge. He also authored an article called “Antitrust and State Action: Economic Efficiency and the Political Process” that further exemplifies his restraint regarding the issue. The appointments made so far and the ones to come will largely shape the antitrust policy of the next half-decade.
The FTC can serve as a microcosm of what we can expect from the Biden administration in regards to anti-trust policy. There are 2 republicans on the commission, unlikely to pursue novel ideas such as creating actual rules from the FTC, but can on the other hand also be trusted to be critical of further consolidation. Lina Khan, on the other hand, can be seen as an almost revolutionary in this field and, if she does take the path of most resistance, could force some real change within the tech industry. More competition could be coming but it will take a lot of hand-wringing and working against compromise: a policy that the Biden campaign did not run on. However, the administration and campaign might be two whole different worlds, with the last couple of months looking like Biden is ready to have a presidency full of consequences, good or bad.