Biden’s Antitrust Team Signals a Big Swing at Corporate Titans

Mr. Biden’s antitrust picks have argued that Facebook, Google and Amazon have monopoly power and have used their dominant positions in social media, search and online retail to squash competitors, leaving consumers with fewer options, even if that doesn’t result in higher costs.

The companies and some economists disagree. Facebook points to TikTok, Snap and Twitter as examples of competitors, and Amazon argues it has just 5 percent of all retail sales in the United States, despite an eMarketer research study showing that 40 percent of all online retail sales occur on its platform.

The president and his aides have cast his embrace of a “trustbuster” mentality as a crucial step toward rebalancing the economy not only to drive down prices but to fuel more competition and create high-paying jobs.

“I always thought the free-market system was not only that there’s competition among companies but guess what: Companies should have to compete for workers,” Mr. Biden told a CNN audience in Ohio on Wednesday, promoting his executive order. “Guess what — maybe they’ll pay more money.”

White House officials argue that putting tough-minded regulators in powerful positions can allow them to succeed with antitrust efforts in a way that President Donald J. Trump, who also issued an executive order on competition and talked of breaking up tech and hospital mergers, did not.

“We are hopeful,” said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute and a proponent of stronger competition enforcement. “But when the rubber meets the road, they are going to have to juggle an aggressive agenda with the realities of courts, Congress and pressure from the outside.”

Some economists warn that Mr. Biden’s appointees could move beyond efforts to break up concentration that truly stifles competition and hurts consumers and into industries like restaurants or grocery stores. There, they say, the entrance of national players into local markets has in many cases given customers more options and created more jobs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/business/biden-antitrust-amazon-google.html