OPINION:
President Trump has been rightly touting the hundreds of billions of dollars he will save from his deregulation initiatives in the areas of energy, education, and housing.
Hooray.
But some of his regulators at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission apparently didn’t get the memo. These antitrust cops are pushing forward with lawsuits—some left over from the Biden Administration—that could hobble U.S. businesses.
Our foreign rivals are loving it. Especially China. It’s almost as if our regulators want to put a tax/tariff on our own made-in-America products.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Joe Biden’s antitrust warriors, led by the notorious super-regulator Lina Kahn, saw a monopoly in any business that dared make a healthy profit.
She tied into knots dozens of iconic American companies - from banks to credit card companies, to our globally dominant tech sector — with harassment lawsuits. She cheered on European regulators when they brought hostile legal actions against U.S. companies.
In virtually every one of these cases, there was scant evidence of price gouging or any harm to consumers. In fact, in most cases, the prices for their products were falling. In some cases, the products, like Google’s best-in-the-world search engines, were FREE. Yet they are now in court against Trump lawyers.
The Justice Department recently blocked a $14 billion merger between Hewlett-Packard and Juniper. Efficiency gains from mergers and acquisitions are one proven source of efficiency gains for American businesses.
There is also a worry that the Trump Justice Department will prosecute Visa for monopolistic behavior. This is even though there are at least three other major debit card companies, and Visa holds only 60% of the market share. Visa also faces stiff competition from alternative payment networks such as Zelle and Venmo. The regulators want to put Zelle out of business as well.
The law firm Mayer-Brown recently reported to their clients that: “The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division say they will continue to use Biden-era merger guidelines, contrary to predictions that the Trump administration would relax antitrust enforcement.” Mr. Ferguson has said it would be too disruptive for the Trump FTC to make major changes from Lina Khan’s progressive, anti-business, and discredited legal theories.
So far, the Trump appointees have blocked a $14 billion merger between Hewlett-Packard and Juniper and sued Meta and Uber for monopolistic behavior.
These companies are all being punished for being TOO successful and have added trillions of dollars to American consumer welfare.
Meta is accused of driving up online advertising costs. The cost of online advertising has gone down by more than 25%, and more than newspaper and TV advertisements.
“The Trump-Vance FTC is fighting back on behalf of the American people,” Mr. Ferguson boasted in a release. It’s unclear which American people he’s talking about, since most Americans love using Visa cards, Google search engines, and Meta social media platforms. And no one is ever forced to use them.
Suppose the FTC and Justice Warriors pick up leftover lawsuits from the Biden Justice Department against Visa, Zelle, airline miles programs, and other products and services. In that case, they will cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars.
I’ve often argued that the only people who benefit from antitrust enforcement are the lawyers. That may be only partly true. The other huge beneficiaries are the Chinese, who might as well be hiring Ferguson as a secret agent to do their bidding.
For our government to hogtie great American companies with frivolous multi-billion-dollar lawsuits is the height of economic masochism.
Mr. Trump should fire the whole lot at the Justice Department and the FTC and hire people who will put America first.
• Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump economic adviser. He is the co-author of “The Trump Economic Miracle.”
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