President-elect Trump faces a pivotal choice: continue the Biden administration’s ill-advised antitrust crusade against America’s leading tech companies, or chart a more balanced course that lets customer choice foster invention and growth.
The stakes are high. If the campaign against digital companies creating uniquely valuable products, sometimes by acquisition, is successful, it will do more than harm a few prominent tech firms. This path could irreparably damage America’s leadership in the digital economy, with consequences rippling far beyond Silicon Valley.
Before substantial damages is done to American market, antitrust needs to be reconnected to business realities.
The most recent example of this challenge is the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook. The case revolves around two dangerously flawed ideas. The first is the FTC’s narrow and arbitrary definition of "market" based on select product features. In Meta’s case, the FTC claims the company dominates a nebulous “personal social networking” market, a term invented to suit its legal argument. The second is an attack on acquisitions as a legitimate path to growth, suggesting that companies must build internally rather than acquire all new capabilities.
Taken together, these ideas set a dangerous precedent that could bring an entire digital economy under........