In the mountain air of Aspen, Colorado, a heated debate unfolded on August 18, 2025, at a Technology Policy Institute panel, where experts grappled with a question at the heart of American economic fairness: Has antitrust enforcement become just another arena for political gamesmanship? The answer, it seems, depends on whom you ask—but nearly everyone agrees that the rules of the road are changing, and not for the better.
According to reporting by the Technology Policy Institute, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent merger decisions and broader antitrust enforcement haven’t been steered by the cold logic of economics, but rather by the shifting winds of politics. Dennis Carlton, an emeritus economics professor at the University of Chicago, didn’t mince words: “It represented a demotion of economic analysis, and instead replaced it with what had gone on 40 years earlier—a reliance on common sense notions, but common sense notions that sometimes didn’t pan out.”
Carl Shapiro, a distinguished professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a self-described interventionist, echoed Carlton’s critique, though with a nuanced twist. While he characterized the Biden administration’s merger policies as “ineffective” and politically tinged, he contrasted them with his own experience at the Justice Department during the Obama years, where, as he put it, there was “no political interference from above.” But the current landscape, Shapiro lamented, is different. The traditional firewall between the White House and the Justice Department on antitrust matters “has fallen away” and has been “breached...in a big way, in a visible way.” Decisions, he argued, are now being overruled “not even based on the work within the antitrust division,” but rather on “blatantly political” grounds rather than the rule of law.
Shapiro also took aim at the FTC’s pursuit of so-called “censorship” claims against tech platforms. In his view, this was an example of using antitrust “for obviously the political purpose” without a legitimate legal foundation. The upshot? Companies are left in the dark, uncertain which mergers might draw federal scrutiny and which might skate through.
Howard Shelanski, a Georgetown law professor and former FTC official, observed that the Trump administration’s approach to antitrust—often described as more pro-business and populist—doesn’t necessarily restore the primacy of economic analysis. “That does not signal a return to careful, economically analytic antitrust, because you can be just as unprincipled in a more pro-business approach as you can in a populist approach,” Shelanski remarked. The implication is clear: The pendulum may swing, but the underlying problem—political interference—remains.
Christopher Yoo, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, issued a stark warning about the long-term consequences of this politicization. “One of the reasons we adopted consumer welfare standards is to get politics out of this,” Yoo explained. “The White House intervention, to me, is incredibly problematic.” The consensus among these experts: When politics trumps principle, the very foundations of antitrust enforcement are at risk.
Yet, the debate is far from academic. As The New Republic detailed on August 20, 2025, the tug-of-war over antitrust policy has real-world consequences—especially as administrations change. In a sweeping analysis, the magazine described how President Donald Trump’s return to office has upended the antitrust landscape. Trump’s administration revoked President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order, which had implemented a “whole-of-government competition policy” aimed at curbing market concentration. Instead, the Trump team has moved to consolidate power, firing the FTC’s two Democratic commissioners (illegally, as the article notes) and recommending sharp funding cuts for the agency.
The Biden administration, for its part, had taken an aggressive stance. Under the leadership of FTC Chair Lina Khan and Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter, Biden’s team filed two and a half times as many anti-monopoly lawsuits as either the first Trump administration or the Obama administration, and brought to trial four times as many billion-dollar mergers, according to the American Economic Liberties Project. But Trump’s approach, as The New Republic argues, is both more selective and more personal. A recent report from Public Citizen found that Trump’s second term has seen one-third of all ongoing investigations and enforcement actions against tech companies either halted or withdrawn. Notably, nearly half of the dropped actions targeted the crypto sector—a business area that Trump himself has recently entered, with reported earnings of around $1 billion despite minimal personal investment.
Political favoritism, some allege, is now baked into the system. Roger Alford, a former deputy in the Justice Department’s antitrust division who was recently fired, described a climate of cronyism and interference. According to Alford, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, “makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend.” The Wall Street Journal further reported that Hewlett Packard secured a favorable antitrust settlement by promising—off the record—to create new U.S. jobs, a pledge not disclosed in court documents and now under review by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Perhaps most controversially, a federal judge recently halted what was described as an unconstitutional FTC investigation into Media Matters for America. The watchdog group had reported that antisemitic Twitter posts, allowed after Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform (now X), appeared alongside ads from major companies. The investigation, critics say, was an attempt to punish Media Matters for exposing the issue—one that led to an advertiser boycott and, ultimately, the cancellation of the offending accounts.
In this charged environment, concerns about the erosion of democratic norms and independent oversight are growing. On August 19, 2025, Common Dreams published a message from co-founder Craig Brown, expressing alarm about the state of U.S. democracy and the influence of corporate media. The article underscored the dangers of corporate lobbyists controlling antitrust enforcement, citing Roger Alford’s warnings. “The U.S. is sliding toward authoritarianism faster than ever, while corporate media turns a blind eye,” Brown wrote, making an urgent appeal for support of independent journalism to shine a light on these critical issues.
As the dust settles on this tumultuous chapter in antitrust enforcement, the stakes could hardly be higher. Whether it’s the Biden administration’s aggressive legal battles or Trump’s more targeted, and some say self-serving, interventions, the future of American competition policy hangs in the balance. With each new revelation, the question looms: Can antitrust law be rescued from the clutches of political expedience, or has it become just another tool in the arsenal of those in power?
For now, the only certainty is uncertainty. As experts, advocates, and watchdogs continue to sound the alarm, the shape of American capitalism—and the rules that govern it—remain very much in flux.
