For the past four years, the federal government has been at war with Big Tech companies. President Biden's explosive parting shot at the Justice Department is baffling lawsuit They are aiming to break up Google. The lawsuit includes various proposals, including hiving Chrome, that would weaken the American economy by discouraging investment, hindering innovation, and creating unnecessary obstacles for consumers accessing technology. It looks like it's intended to.
Continuing the antitrust laws that Donald Trump inherited from Biden would needlessly hurt economic growth. His political movement will not survive it.
Trump is betting everything on the economy. he was elected to the position of president Thanks to soaring food prices. Inflation is down, but food prices will remain high and there will be tariffs. threaten to raise the prices of some goods again. Voters in battleground states will notice if the prices of imported coffee, fruit, sugar and soap rise. Therefore, President Trump needs to ensure some level of economic growth to prevent the MAGA project from disappearing in 2028.
Silicon Valley is the answer.
Big Tech is perhaps America's most successful export. Walk down the street in almost any country and you'll probably see someone using Google on an Android smartphone. People who don't use Android have iPhones. Countless people use WhatsApp, which is part of Meta. They have Windows computers and use Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to browse American websites. Everywhere you look in every corner of the globe, people are buying and using products from America's Big Tech companies. Mr. Trump should lean toward Silicon Valley, not avoid it.
The second Trump administration has already achieved some results. Image of “technology friends”. J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswami are all closely related With some sort of Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Trump received support from across the venture capital and crypto world. Marc Andreessen to Winklevoss twins.
But whether the Trump brand of tech bros will ultimately benefit Silicon Valley is debatable. Earlier this year, Vance praised Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission in the Biden administration. fire Her own devastating lawsuit aimed at breaking up successful American companies like Amazon.
It is in President Trump's interest to take an early lead on antitrust, rather than denying future possibilities. Interventionists like Khan, who deplore the successes of corporate America and believe new regulation is the answer to all of society's problems, will not hide for the next four years. In fact, the voice gets louder when I step outside the tent.
The Overton Window in antitrust law is rapidly sliding toward further state intervention in markets. Jonathan Haidt has become something of a technology alarmist thought leader in recent years. Recently on Wired Editorialhe likened technology to alcohol and argued that regulators should ban anyone under 21 from accessing much of the internet.
“The idea that only parents should control their children's alcohol intake would seem absurd to most people,” he writes. “Similarly, allowing children of all ages to access all the places on the Internet that adults once accessed will soon seem absurd.”
In addition to the obvious fact that regulations aimed at restricting Internet access rarely work — Kids know their IP from their information. VPN And restrictions can be easily circumvented. This kind of thinking reflects European-style centrism, where economic growth is secondary to safety concerns. It would be foolish and self-defeating for President Trump to align his administration with this anti-technology mentality.
To deliver on his promise to voters of growth and prosperity, Mr. Trump should focus on protecting and boosting America's most successful industries. It starts with cutting the web of red tape enthusiasts who are using antitrust laws as a means to dramatically expand the size of the nation. It also means scrapping the outgoing Biden Justice Department's absurd proposal to blow up Google.
It will take little effort on President Trump's part to not only say no to these radical proposals from his Silicon Valley enemies, but to make Big Tech's success a reality for himself. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world get off to bottomless swamp of regulationinvestment flows into the U.S. economy and a handful of high-tech companies can sit back and watch the S&P 500 index continue to rise. rise rapidly.
That's the strange thing about free markets. Free markets are most successful when governments expend little effort. Breaking up Google would take a huge amount of time and energy. For the future of the economy and his movement, the best thing the 78-year-old president-elect can do is do nothing.
Jason Reed is a policy analyst and political commentator who has written for more than 100 major media outlets in 15 countries. He is a spokesperson and project manager for the nonprofit organization Young Voices.
