Antitrust

Jack Nicastro | 5.8.2025 2:19 PM

The anti–free market views of the Trump administration's antitrust enforcers are coming into full view, and it's boding poorly for the American economy. Abigail Slater, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, recently delivered her "America First Antitrust" speech, which outlined a populist agenda that punishes firms for being large. Days later, Mark Meador, commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, published his "Antitrust Policy for the Conservative" essay, which evinces prejudice against big companies.

"Big is bad," says Meador, who calls on conservatives to "reaffirm that concentrated economic power is just as dangerous as concentrated political power." Meador does not explain how market power is morally analogous to political power and the use of coercion but challenges conservatives to oppose bigness in private business the way they do in government. But there's good reason to be against one and not the other.

Increasing the size and scope of government entails a commensurate reduction of the private sphere and personal liberty; Microsoft, Walmart, and Häagen-Dazs increasing their market shares does not. Meador disagrees, describing antitrust law as the means to prevent "anarchistic private tyranny" and encourages conservatives to "reject a laissez-faire or libertarian approach to antitrust law."

Meador associates the libertarian approach principally with legal scholar Robert Bork's consumer welfare standard, which holds that the Sherman Antitrust Act........

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