The Trump administration has made progress in several Biden-era antitrust litigation, policy and position, and has a continuous focus on offensive antitrust enforcement that could spell out big technology troubles.
Despite President Trump's seemingly close relationship with technology leaders in his second term, his administration doesn't seem keen to mess up antitrust enforcement, which has been targeting the industry's biggest players in recent years.
“Overall, what we see is primarily continuity between Biden and Trump's antitrust administrations,” said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Freedom Project, a nonprofit advocate for strong antitrust enforcement.
The Justice Department (DOJ) has indicated it is seeking Google's farewell earlier this month, even after suggesting that Trump might oppose such a move last fall.
The presidential candidate at the time would break up in October
“Dangerous” and able to benefit China, his DOJ was largely maintaining the Biden administration's proposal that required Google to sell it from the Chrome browser.
“Trump DOJ confirms Google's commitment to structural splits in structural remedies. It was a great signal that we see in the continuity from one administration to another,” Hegde told Hill.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which leads the administration's antitrust policy along with the DOJ, said in February it will continue to use merger guidelines established under former President Biden in 2023.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson wrote last month to agency staff that the guidelines were not “perfect,” but he said it was primarily a “reprint of previous iterations” and emphasized the importance of stability.
“As such, the stability of both parties' overall administration was the name of the game,” Ferguson added, “I have been asked many times about the fate of the guidelines for 2023.
DOJ also sued to stop the merger between Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Juniper Network shortly after Trump took office. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration prepared the challenge and met with officials from top companies in November.
John Dubrau, the US antitrust leader of law firm McDermott Will & Emery, said in a statement to the Hill that he was hoping for “some major changes in terms of merger review.”
However, he noted that FTC committee members Melissa Holyoak and Gail Slater, newly confirmed directors of the DOJ's antitrust division, have shown that the administration is “not hostile” to mergers and acquisitions.
Ferguson also reportedly told the leading CEO at last week's closed door meeting that the FTC wasn't aiming to get in the way of the merger, and appears to be trying to separate herself from the hard-pressed stance of former FTC chair Lina Khan.
“If you think that actions or mergers will hurt Americans financially, I'm taking you to court,” Ferguson said. “But if we don't, we'll not get in the way of hell.”
The anti-trust push is not entirely unexpected for Trump. Trump brought several major antitrust laws in his first term.
The Google case was first filed during Trump's first term. The DOJ sued the tech giant in 2020, accusing him of maintaining an illegal monopoly on online searches. A federal judge took sides with the government last August.
Trump's FTC also brought on anti-trust lawsuits against Meta, Facebook and Instagram parent companies, which are scheduled to go to trial in April.
Big tech companies are key targets for antitrust enforcement in both Trump and Biden, another area of ”continuity,” says Dubrow.
In addition to the incidents against Amazon and Apple, the Biden administration followed up a Trump-era lawsuit in 2023 in its second Google Antitrust case.
However, Dubrow emphasized that “focusing on content moderation” under the current administration “that could limit competition for ideas and freedom of speech.”
Last month, Ferguson announced that the FTC launched an investigation into content policies and user bans from large tech companies, and that their actions could amount to illegal censorship.
The rigorous scrutiny of the tech industry is in contrast to Trump's apparent alignment with Silicon Valley. While technology executives have played a key role in his administration, nothing more prominent and controversial than Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Musk is heading Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as he seeks to cut down a large portion of government spending. So far, this includes significant cuts in federal workforce and federal government funding and grants.
Outside of the government, the high-tech industry has also embraced Trump. Many technical leaders met with the president at Mar-A-Lago before he took office and donated $1 million to his inauguration.
Several high-tech titans, including Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, joined Trump at his inauguration and received the highest seat at the oath ceremony.
Since taking office, Trump and Vice President Vance have expressed interest in supporting and reducing innovation, particularly in AI, with a key victory for high-tech companies.
It is still unclear where antitrust enforcement will end under Trump, less than two months after he took office. The White House on Tuesday fired two Democrat committee members at the FTC, prompting backlash.
“We've seen this administration undergo a major shaking in changing all sorts of policies across the government,” Dubrow said.
“Their decision to not return to guidelines probably shows that the Trump Antitrust Team will continue closer to Biden's progressive antitrust genera than I had predicted a few months ago,” he continued. “But when we look at the types of cases this administration will or will not bring about for next or two years, there is evidence.”
