Big Tech Antitrust: Postelection Edition
As Giorgio Castiglia explains in a commentary for Econlib, while U.S. antitrust enforcement is likely to shift under a second Trump administration, ongoing cases against Big Tech are expected to continue.
Globally, many countries have enacted or proposed new laws aimed at curbing the market power of large digital platforms. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the most prominent example. By contrast, similar legislative efforts in the U.S. failed, signaling a continued reliance on traditional, case-by-case antitrust enforcement. This ex-post approach is seen as more compatible with innovation than the EU’s more interventionist style—which, as Mario Draghi’s report notes, has contributed to Europe’s lag in tech-driven productivity growth compared to the U.S.
U.S. antitrust actions intensified under both the Trump and Biden administrations, with the latter embracing the neo-Brandeisian view that corporate concentration drives economic inequality and stagnation. Yet even as tech companies have continued to grow, they now face increasing legal risks and a regulatory climate shaped by global measures like the DMA—most of which disproportionately affect U.S. firms.
Castiglia argues that this regulatory momentum overlooks the value these firms create for consumers and the risks that aggressive structural or behavioral remedies pose to innovation and competitiveness. He points to the DOJ’s case against Google as an example of a disproportionate remedy driven more by ideology than harm.
Rather than doubling down on neo-Brandeisian antitrust, Castiglia calls for a return to evidence-based policymaking that recognizes how firms evolve in response to incentives and market dynamics. He concludes that many public concerns about Big Tech—such as data privacy—should be addressed through targeted laws, not antitrust, which is designed to protect competition, not solve broader societal issues.
