The aggressive antitrust approach adopted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice's (DOJ) antitrust division during the Biden administration reduced startup acquisitions and venture capital investment, according to a recent study by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA).
During the Biden administration, the FTC and DOJ adopted a neo-Brandeisian approach to antitrust, where stopping businesses from becoming too big was prioritized over the consumer welfare standard that had characterized antitrust law since the late 1970s. This led the agencies to bring lawsuits against Big Tech and other large firms for behavior that did not clearly harm consumers. In the last two months of Joe Biden's presidency, the FTC sued Southern Glazer's and PepsiCo for violating the Robinson-Patman Act, a 1936 law outlawing price discrimination that hadn't been invoked in two decades. Meanwhile, the DOJ won a lawsuit against Google, claiming it had monopolized the search engine market and recommending the company's divestiture from Chrome and Android.
Federal antitrust enforcers pursued litigation against large firms not only for vertical integration and alleged price discrimination but for mergers and acquisitions as well. The FTC and DOJ boasted about filing "50 merger enforcement actions…the highest level of enforcement activity in over 20 years," in their 2022 annual report.
