'Plutocracy Is Its Own Kind of Dictatorship,' Biden Antitrust Chief Warns in Farewell Address
"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," said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the antitrust head at the Department of Justice who helped turbocharge the agency's efforts to rein in monopoly power, bid farewell to his post in a speech Tuesday during which he warned that "plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship."
Kanter's deputy, Doha Mekki, will take over leading the Antitrust Division starting Friday. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Gail Slater, a tech and media policy advisor who worked for Vice President-elect JD Vance, to permanently replace Kanter.
In his speech, Kanter described how President Joe Biden's administration had a clear mandate from the public to break with the antitrust approach of previous decades: "When I took office in 2021, questions about monopoly power were no longer just a technocratic concern relegated to the narrow halls of white-shoe law firms and elite academic institutions. Our nation was experiencing a remarkable moment unlike any I had seen in my lifetime. Americans across the country had become acutely aware of the powerful forces that were suppressing their economic freedom."
To get himself ready for the role, he looked for inspiration from the "storied trustbusters of yesteryear"—particularly Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson, who led antitrust enforcement at the Department of Justice under FDR. "In 2021, the similarities to 1936 were unmistakable. They say that history rhymes. Well, it sure does. And this time it had 'bars,' as the youth say."
Then, as now, antitrust enforcement is an engine for economic prosperity, Kanter said. It can lower prices by limiting the market power of large companies, increase growth and prosperity by curbing corporate-imposed private regulation that "sap entrepreneurs of opportunity," and provide greater mobility and higher wages for workers, he argued.
With that "why" in mind, the division "confronted the Herculean task of operationalizing our mandate to restore, revive, and reimagine antitrust enforcement for our nation."
In many respects, Kanter was successful in that mission. During his time with the Department of Justice, the agency notched a major legal victory over the company Google, which Kanter's team and states had argued held an illegal monopoly in the search engine and advertising market. In August, a federal judge ruled that Google was an illegal monopolist for spending tens of billions on default search deals, a decision that has been called the "biggest antitrust case of the 21st century."
The Antitrust Division has also filed ongoing cases against Visa, the rent-fixing software RealPage, Ticketmaster, and others. Cases brought by the division also successfully blocked a merger between publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, as well as JetBlue's acquisition of Spirit.
In response to the news that Kanter is stepping down, Nidhi Hegde, interim executive director at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Tuesday that under Kanter's leadership "the DOJ Antitrust Division has become an enforcer fit for the modern economy—and a powerful ally of American consumers, workers, and small businesses."
Kanter offered advice to future enforcers, such as engaging people outside of the Beltway and "dispel[ling] the myth that less competition at home helps the U.S. compete more abroad."
The stakes of lax enforcement are high, he warned: "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."
