Biden Antitrust : The Middle Way

Shortly after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President in 2017, we wrote an article entitled “America-First Antitrust.” In the article we speculated on what the signature theme of Donald Trump’s campaign might mean for antitrust enforcement in the coming administration. We feared that “America First” might lead to nationalistic antitrust in which non-U.S. interests would be a target of active discrimination.The incoming Biden administration does not offer a similar signature theme, however. Instead, we have signals that Biden wants tougher antitrust and wants to control big tech, and also numerous statements from Biden that he wants to govern by consensus. In this essay we attempt to distill an antitrust agenda meet for the time, the middle way. We think that dramatic change is needed in US antitrust, but we see critical roadblocks to that agenda for the near future, both legislative and judicial, that can’t be ignored. We divide our agenda into four R’s for the Biden administration: restore integrity, rejoin the world, reinvigorate enforcement, and rethink key approaches. The first three R’s focus on the immediate; they are goals for the first year of Biden antitrust. The fourth–rethinking key approaches—is critical for making more fundamental changes in antitrust