DOJ Antitrust Head: Trump Won’t Make Regulatory ‘U-Turn’

The outgoing head of the Justice Department’s antitrust unit is hopeful about the new administration.

More to the point, Jonathan Kanter is hoping that the Trump White House will continue the regulatory efforts begun by President Joe Biden.

“If we revert to a regime of lax antitrust enforcement, that is . . . the prerogative of whoever’s in charge,” Jonathan Kanter, who last week stepped down as head of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust unit, told the Financial Times (FT) in an interview Monday (Dec. 23).

“But the impact on the public is unmistakable. So my expectation is that if there was a complete U-turn on antitrust, which I don’t expect, that the public demand will make that temporary.”

According to the FT, Kanter, who took the job in 2021, has successfully stopped several major deals, and his tough stance on enforcement led to other deals being called off. And while monopoly lawsuits had once been rare, there is now large-scale litigation underway against companies like Google and Apple.

“We focused on the biggest problems involving the biggest companies, and we took . . . a cornerstone of antitrust law and we made that a centerpiece of our work,” Kanter said.

However, the FT says, it’s not clear whether these efforts will have lasting effect, or be overturned in court or reversed by the next administration. Kanter pointed to antitrust challenges in areas such as airfares and healthcare, saying he was “optimistic that those cases will continue to have strong appeal for the Department of Justice, regardless of who’s in charge.”

There are some signals about how the second Trump administration would approach regulation. The incoming president has tapped investor David Sacks, a noted critic of regulation, to serve as his crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) czar.

“He will ensure the United States is at the cutting edge of innovation,” Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, told Bloomberg News earlier this month, arguing that Sacks will prevent the U.S. from falling behind China, and will protect “newly emerging tech from left-wing censorship and bias.”

And as covered here last month, Trump has said he would overturn President Joe Biden’s comprehensive AI executive order signed last year, arguing the rule hurts innovation.