U.S. president-elect Donald Trump arrives at a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on Nov. 13 in Washington, DC. There is cause for optimism that Mr. Trump could represent an evolution rather than abandonment of this new economic tide.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Keldon Bester is the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
A cornerstone of U.S. President Joe Biden’s domestic policy agenda has been tackling monopoly and taking an active hand in promoting competition. That agenda has scored several concrete wins. A small sample includes the FTC’s outlawing of noncompete clauses in employment agreements, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s banning of medical debt in credit score calculations and the blocking of harmful mergers across a range of sectors.
For fans of these regulators and policies, the truth is that a seamless continuation beyond the Biden administration is unlikely. This prospect has been received particularly warmly on Wall Street. President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign had featured a close embrace of interest groups such as Big Oil and Big Crypto, as well as Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet. The kind of federal agency retreat that many of Mr. Trump’s billionaire backers are pushing for would represent a U-turn from a budding antitrust movement toward a corporate free-for-all.
But Mr. Trump is mercurial when it comes to his policy positions, and the shape of his victory could play to either path. Mr. Trump’s win of not just the electoral college but also the popular vote could embolden him to narrowly focus on the policy priorities of his moneyed inner circle. On the other hand, it could affirm in him a preference for policies that seek to expand and cement a wider base of support among ordinary Americans. In fact, there is cause for optimism that Mr. Trump could represent an evolution rather than abandonment of this new economic tide.
What isn’t always talked about is that the continuing American antitrust revival began to bear fruit during the first Trump administration before growing in scope and scale under Mr, Biden. The case that brought the landmark victory against Google’s search monopoly earlier this year was launched in 2020 by Mr. Trump’s attorney-general. That same year the FTC filed what is a continuing case against Facebook’s monopolization of social-media markets. Mr. Trump was also a vocal critic of AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc. in 2018, an acquisition the telecom giant spun off just three years after purchasing despite opposition from the Trump Department of Justice.
There are also signs that this skeptical stance could carry over to Mr. Trump’s second term in office. Mr. Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate brought one of the most prominent Republican fans of FTC chair Lina Khan into the president-elect’s orbit. Mr. Vance draws on the work of prominent thinkers on the American right, including Compact magazine founder Sohrab Ahmari, who earlier this year called on the next president, whoever that ended up being, to keep in place the economic reformers brought in under Mr. Biden. Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, nominated by Mr. Trump for the position of attorney-general, is a certified “Khanservative,” who hopes “whoever is the next FTC chair would continue many of the cases that Chair Khan has brought against predatory businesses.”
These sources of support represent planks of a continuing realignment toward populist economics on the American right. Exemplified by the conservative think tank American Compass founded in 2020, this movement is breaking with a blind faith in free markets and low taxes in favour of pro-worker and pro-family economic policy and an appetite for actively shaping important markets. Long-standing intellectual and legal institutions on the right are also shifting on the topic. The Federalist Society, long the enemy of nearly any federal oversight of commerce and one of the most powerful legal organizations on the right, has been rediscovering the threat of private power.
Over the past four years the Biden administration has led the way in showing what economic policy that breaks with decades of consensus can do for ordinary people. While Mr. Trump’s election is a decisive defeat for Democrats, it could represent the next step toward the embrace of a more populist economics by both parties.