Is the campaign to rein in Silicon Valley still alive?  What does it look like?  Some clues came just days ago at Georgetown University, where regulators from around the world gathered for an annual antitrust symposium.

At the event, Gail Slater, President Trump’s newly installed head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson left no doubt about where they stand.  They argued that monopolies hurt competition, as does government overreach.  As Ferguson explained, “government regulation can be the enemy of competition, vibrancy, innovation, and resiliency no less than the unlawful exercise of economic power.”

That dual focus — tough on corporate monopolies but equally skeptical of regulatory monopolies — has defined Trump’s antitrust approach from day one of his second term.  It is a distinctly conservative populist vision: not the old Bush-Romney era of rubber-stamping mergers, and not the Biden-era obsession with punishing companies for being successful.  Instead, MAGA antitrust aims to protect competition itself, whether the threat comes from Silicon Valley giants or Washington bureaucrats.

A Populist Turn in Competition Policy

In her first major speech after confirmation, Slater said, “America First Antitrust ... will stand for America’s forgotten consumers.  We will stand for America’s forgotten workers.  And we will stand for the small businesses and innovators, from Little Tech to manufacturing to family farms that were forgotten by our economic policies for too long.”

That’s a striking contrast to Biden’s approach, which used antitrust as a weapon against political targets while wasting resources on flimsy lawsuits like the Visa case, where the DOJ tried to brand Visa a monopolist in a market that was already competitive and heavily regulated.  It claimed that Visa’s debit swipe fees raised the costs of “nearly everything” even though they amounted to just pennies — a sad attempt to blame government-caused inflation on an easy private-sector scapegoat.  Those cases didn’t deliver wins for consumers.  They only wasted taxpayer money and scared off economic investments.

By contrast, Slater’s DOJ has lost the partisan charades and finger-pointing while still taking meaningful steps against real monopolistic behavior. 

In the Google search monopoly case, DOJ pressed for structural remedies up to and including a Chrome browser sell-off.  Although Judge Amit Mehta didn’t go that far, Slater did secure a major win: forcing Google to share search data with competitors.

That’s a concrete step toward more competition in digital markets.  And the fight isn’t over.  Legal experts like Joel Thayer argue that the administration has strong grounds to appeal portions of Mehta’s decision, particularly the $20 billion default-search deal that locks Apple devices into Google’s ecosystem.  If Trump’s DOJ pushes further, it could reshape one of the most entrenched tech monopolies in modern history.

The So-Called “Scandal”

Still, some commentators claim that MAGA antitrust is faltering.  Politico recently argued that Trump’s enforcers have been “de-prioritized” amid political intrigue.  The primary evidence?  The HPE-Juniper merger, in which the DOJ allowed two telecom companies to merge per the wishes of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

That episode was messy — two DOJ lawyers were fired for insubordination after publicly defying leadership.  But it hardly signals the collapse of MAGA antitrust.  On the contrary, it shows the administration taking a broader view.  The reason DOJ cleared the deal wasn’t to protect big business but to protect national security.  As one national security official explained, approving the merger “serves the interests of the United States by strengthening domestic capabilities and is critical to countering ... China.”

Balancing competition policy with national security is not weakness.  It’s leadership.  It’s exactly what Biden failed to do when his administration allowed Chinese-linked firms to expand U.S. market share while harassing American companies with politicized lawsuits.

Competition without Bureaucratic Overreach

That’s why claims of a “retreat” on antitrust miss the bigger picture.  Trump’s team isn’t abandoning enforcement.  It just understands that the objective of antitrust is to break up real monopolies like Google while leaving innocent companies alone.

It also means recognizing that government itself is often the worst monopoly around.  Overbearing regulations, excessive red tape, and politically driven lawsuits from Big Brother can smother the very competition antitrust law is supposed to protect.  Trump’s appointees are making that case not only in Washington, but also on the international stage, as Ferguson did at this year’s International Competition Network conference.

The Bottom Line

So is MAGA antitrust dead?  Hardly.  It has survived the noise, the press spin, and the manufactured scandals.  It is evolving into a uniquely conservative, working-class competition policy, one that takes on Silicon Valley billionaires and unelected Washington regulators alike.

For too long, antitrust was a tool of either corporate lobbyists or of progressive ideologues.  Under Trump, it is becoming something else: a shield for consumers, workers, and small businesses against concentrated power in all its forms.

If you want proof, just look at the Georgetown symposium.  The message was clear: The campaign to rein in Silicon Valley is not only alive.  It’s just getting started.

Ashley Clapper Bennett, J.D. is an attorney in Central Texas.  She is a member of the Central Texas Republican Women and Texas Federation of Republican Women and a former candidate for the 146th Judicial District Court.

Image: pasja1000 via Pixabay, Pixabay License.