There’s strong bipartisan support for antitrust vs. big tech

The Biden administration has made antitrust enforcement a priority. It has brought actions against large airline companies like Jet Blue and, yes, numerous cases against Big Tech. Many of the Biden administration's antitrust efforts have been met with strong conservative support. So much so that it inspired the Wall Street Journal to introduce a new term into the antitrust nomenclature: "Khanservatives." The ascription refers to conservatives who support Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan's relentless pursuit to revert antitrust enforcement to a more trust-busting style. Libertarian Big Tech advocates use the term "Khanservative" as an epithet to treat all conservative support for antitrust enforcement as unprincipled. That view is categorically wrong. Republicans have a long tradition of pushing back on concentrated authorities. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to break up monopolies. President Ronald Reagan's Department of Justice broke up AT&T's monopoly over interstate telecommunications networks. Judge Robert Bork supported the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s. And the Trump administration initiated antitrust probes into Apple and Google. Another flaw in the criticism of anti-monopoly conservatives is that the cases garnering most conservative support in the Biden administration were not initiated by Chair Khan, but by the Justice Department. And that makes sense. The department's approach follows a more traditional path towards antitrust enforcement by adhering to a consumer welfare framework. The Justice Department's cases against Apple and Google are prime examples. The department makes strong arguments that both Apple and Google have extraordinary market power and abuse that power in their respective markets—arguments that recall its enforcement against Microsoft in the 1990s. Take the department's Google Search case, which the Trump administration initiated. Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr, who brought the case, said that "the antitrust case against Google is a Republican project." There're also clear-cut monopoly abuse issues here. Google stands accused of hiding articles, blocking political emails it doesn't favor, and killing any innovation in the search market that threatens its dominance. In addition, conservatives at the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation have rallied in support of the case against Apple. As Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) points out, the Justice Department's Apple case builds on an investigation that started under the Trump administration. It charges Apple with killing competitors that challenge its dominance. Just ask Beeper Mini, which competed directly with Apple's iMessage, or the 343,000 apps the company kicked off its App Store with nary an explanation other than that they may violate user privacy—all while listing TikTok as an "essential" app, mind you. It also forces monopoly rents to the tune of 30 percent for merely existing on its App Store—the only store Apple allows on its devices.