Biden DOJ bites off more than it can chew
With yet another Department of Justice lawsuit against Google, it’s becoming obvious that antitrust enforcers are upending years of stable antitrust standards.
Having a new shaky antitrust case being opened while another case against the same company is still pending shows a concerning pattern. This overzealous enforcement strategy is chilling the American economy and international competitiveness, with the government pressuring companies that are acting lawfully through excessive antitrust lawsuits for ideological reasons.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TAKES AIM AT MARKET INFLUENCE OF GOOGLE AND APPLE APP STORES
The situation has gotten so extreme that Federal Trade Commissioner Christine Wilson just resigned in protest. President Joe Biden’s administration needs to rein in its rogue antitrust enforcers before consumers and taxpayers have to pay the price.
Many businesses depend on a stable and predictable online ad market, of which Google is a key member but also has substantial competition. These platforms’ technological innovations have empowered small businesses and startups to succeed in e-commerce. More than 40% of small business owners surveyed use a marketing platform such as Google Ads, Amazon, TikTok, or Facebook’s tools. Indeed, I have used several different platforms to advertise for small businesses in the past. Many small businesses have been able to thrive with no physical presence in large part because of Google and other companies' abilities to connect them with customers that would love their products.
To protect economic freedom and taxpayer resources, antitrust enforcement agencies should adhere to the time-tested and decades-old consumer welfare standard. This standard has led to increased quality of life for businesses and consumers and stability for the economy.
Now, only a few years after launching a major antitrust case against Google, the DOJ is now targeting another segment of its business. Given the recent spate of merger scrutiny and the overall posture of the current antitrust regulators and their public justifications, it’s clear that innovators and taxpayers should be worried that these seismic enforcement changes are chilling innovation and contributing to the nation’s economic malaise. Tech stocks were devastated last year, and thousands of tech workers were laid off in droves. Even small business optimism continues to slump below the half-century average.
As Chinese competition for the position of world leader in technological innovation heats up, American companies can ill afford to be watching their backs for misguided antitrust lawsuits that don’t have substantial merit. It’s unfortunate that the lead DOJ antitrust attorney recently stated, “If we take our mandate seriously, we need to acknowledge the possibility that sometimes a court might not agree with us — and yet go to court anyway.”
Last year, the DOJ took significant losses in several high-profile cases, including U.S. Sugar/Imperial Sugar, Booz Allen Hamilton/EverWatch, UnitedHealth Group/Change Healthcare, and even on a chicken price-fixing case. This track record has not only chilled economic merger activity but wasted substantial taxpayer resources.
Antitrust enforcers seem to have absorbed the wrong lessons from the old Wayne Gretzky adage, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” That may be true, but it helps if you’re not taking impossible and ill-advised shots from center ice. As 2022 demonstrated, independent courts are consistently disagreeing on similar fact patterns. Therefore, the DOJ and FTC should reassess their approach and stop attempting to pick winners and losers in the marketplace based on executive branch direction. It’s time they looked after the best interests of taxpayers instead of pursuing their own ideological agenda.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-doj-bites-off-more-than-it-can-chew