Antitrust officials in Washington and their supporters across the political spectrum are wondering whether Kamala Harris is fully committed to President Joe Biden’s crusade against America’s largest companies.
Antitrust, normally a background issue in national politics, has become one of the White House’s top legacy issues, and increasingly urgent as Biden’s top corporate regulators have launched a new wave of major lawsuits over insulin prices, financial services and rental costs.
On top of existing cases against Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Ticketmaster and more, that puts the next president in the position of powering a historic push against corporate growth, or stopping it in its tracks.
What Harris decides to do if she wins is “very important,” said Josh Tzuker, a former Justice Department antitrust official who joined the consulting firm FGS Global earlier this year. “The Biden administration has charted a course that will be really difficult to change.”
Harris has said little explicitly about antitrust laws, but the signals she has sent so far have been encouraging to some antitrust advocates.
As part of the economic policy plan that Harris posted last week, Harris supports several antitrust moves by the Biden administration. He decried price fixing by owners, an issue the Justice Department is addressing in a lawsuit against a software company. He also attacked supermarket mergers as the Federal Trade Commission awaits a decision on its lawsuit to block the megadeal between Kroger and Albertsons.
Notably, however, he has said little about Big Tech, a key focus of Biden’s top antitrust officials, Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department.
Some Harris critics on the left worry about the ties of some of her advisers to big business, including her brother-in-law and Uber’s chief lawyer, Tony West, and debate consultant Karen Dunn, a corporate lawyer who is currently leading the defense. of Google in an antitrust lawsuit. case.
That, along with Harris’s silence in the face of calls from major donors like LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman to fire Khan from her post as FTC chair, has some antitrust advocates upset. highly strung.
A spokesperson for Harris’ campaign did not respond for comment.
The next president officially inherits each of the administration’s cases, but it is up to the White House how hard to push its antitrust agencies. The movement’s momentum could be in jeopardy not only if former President Donald Trump wins and slows business growth, but also if Harris wins and takes office without the same fervor as her predecessor.
Veteran antitrust advocate Barry Lynn says he detected two strong antitrust signals at this summer’s Democratic National Convention. One of them was a speech by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who progressives have long considered to be among the Biden administration officials most comfortable with big business. He used his convention speech to denounce the “monopolies that crush small businesses, workers and startups.”
Another sign was the prominent appearance of the populist antitrust hawk. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the night Harris accepted the nomination.
The Biden administration’s focus on economic competition has proven popular with voters, and has even begun to make waves in pop culture. FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, a key face of the effort, appeared on the Daily Show before an enthusiastic audience. TO commissioned survey because The Guardian found that Harris’s proposal to ban price gouging was the most popular economic policy adopted by her or the Trump campaign.
There are also several advisers whose presence in Harris’s orbit would indicate she is likely to stay the course. They include Biden’s former National Economic Council director Brian Deese, who advises Harris on economic policy; and Bharat Ramamurti, former Deese MP in the NEC and alumnus of Warren’s office. Just last month, Rachel Brown, who led competition policy at the NEC, also joined Harris’ campaign, according to people with knowledge of the move.
A Biden administration official noted that those people would likely not be involved in the campaign if Harris were looking to make a major break with Biden on economic policy. “The gang is back together,” the official said.
“I don’t think we have the final say on this, but it is broadly consistent with the antitrust program that has been enormously popular,” Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who previously led the antitrust policy, said of Harris. competition in Biden’s National Economic Council. ‘ Antitrust plans to date. “Obviously, whoever she appoints will be the deciding point, but the overall themes don’t suggest a real breakup.”
A “surplus” of antitrust lawsuits is a feature of every presidential transition, but it is especially acute in this one, where Joe Biden’s aggressive approach to competition policy has allowed regulators to file a historic series of major lawsuits against powerful players.
The FTC and the Department of Justice have practically been taking antitrust cases to court in recent months, and more will be on the way before January 20. Those cases will take years to resolve, making it difficult for any successor to dramatically change course.