San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Biden is right about Big Tech
President Biden’s new order promoting competition in technology, health care and other industries challenges the fallacy that government abdication is inherently good for business and, by extension, the economy.
The order drew an immediate and predictable chorus of objections from telecommunications, pharmaceutical and other lobbies, but it stands to benefit small businesses that can’t deploy armies of paid advocates to Washington. The president’s procompetitive push could likewise help consumers, workers and overall growth by using federal power to foster, of all things, capitalism — or at least a more fair and vigorous form thereof. As Biden noted, “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation.”
With scores of directives and recommendations to agencies across the federal government targeting anticompetitive practices in goods and services as diverse as internet access, baggage handling and hearing aids, Biden’s order represents a healthy corrective to his predecessor’s approach.
While Donald Trump’s Justice Department belatedly filed an antitrust case against Google shortly before the former president lost his reelection attempt, his administration rarely moved to protect competition. And it repeatedly did so with transparently political motives, targeting mergers involving media companies whose coverage he disliked, for example, and the automakers that voluntarily agreed to abide by California’s fuel efficiency standards.
Trump’s abortive antitrust investigation of Ford and other automakers was emblematic of his administration’s antiregulatory extremism and its counterproductive consequences. In that and other cases, some of the very companies that were supposed to benefit from the federal retreat declined to take advantage of their expanded permission to pollute. And all of them acknowledged the disadvantages of the uncertainty that ensued as federal and state governments fought it out in court.
The Trumpera Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of consumer internet access protections caused similar regulatory disarray as California and other states enacted socalled net neutrality rules. Biden’s order appropriately urges the FCC to restore responsible federal oversight of a critical public asset. It also promises to require service providers such as Comcast and AT&T to disclose more information to consumers while seeking to limit their ability to monopolize service to renters through deals with landlords.
Citing FDR as well as the Republican, trustbusting Roosevelt, Teddy, Biden signaled that technology mergers and acquisitions will face more scrutiny for a range of anticompetitive threats, underlining a message he sent last month by choosing antitrust expert and Big Tech critic Lina Khan to lead the Federal Trade Commission. Restraints on Big Tech could, in turn, preserve more small businesses, whether they’re trying to compete with the technology giants or just reserve the right to repair their devices.
Along with congressional efforts to strengthen oversight of technology companies’ anticompetitive tactics, Biden’s order begins to grapple with the necessity of regulating companies that have accumulated power well beyond the capacity just to stamp out competition. As evidenced by the socialmediaassisted sowing of widespread doubt in the results of elections and the science of vaccinations, unchecked corporate power has reached the point of threatening the very health of our democracy and ourselves.