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Election 2024: How will the candidates regulate big tech?

The Biden administration has been more aggressive than almost any in recent American history in its antitrust efforts. In the tech sector alone, it has ongoing cases against Apple, Meta, Google and Amazon, not to mention its battles with Ticketmaster, Microsoft, Kroger, CVS, Visa, Penguin Random House and more.

Biden, Lina Khan(chair of the FTC) and Jonathan Kanter (head of the DOJ’s antitrust division) have spent the last several years working to prevent giant mergers, increase competition and punish companies (however lightly) for unfair business practices. She touts her record as attorney general of California in leading lawsuits against the medical industry, and says during her stump speeches that “companies need to play by the rules, respect the rights of workers and unions and abide by fair competition. While Project 2025 pays some lip service to the negative impact on consumers of having too much industry power concentrated in too few hands, it spends most of its time discussing ESG (environmental, social and governance) and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives by businesses as a non-economic reason to pursue antitrust efforts, suggesting the Heritage Foundation sees antimonopoly laws not as a way to prevent the concentration of economic power, but as a cudgel to punish those promoting social and political ideologies it dislikes.

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