The Courts Are Rejecting Biden’s Antitrust Crusade

In summer 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” A White House fact sheet declared that the economy was “booming under President Biden’s leadership,” saying the order was “building on this economic momentum” by pushing back against corporate consolidation, primarily through aggressive antitrust enforcement.

A little more than a year later, the economy was flailing. Myriad economists and business leaders warned that the country was on the brink of a recession. Biden’s antitrust effort was not performing much better. In late 2022, the government suffered a string of losses in high-profile antitrust cases. Its biggest antitrust victory, meanwhile, demonstrated the strategy’s underlying futility.

Early on, Biden staffed his administration with high-profile backers of aggressive antitrust enforcement, such as Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, who reportedly helped draft the executive order, and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. “There is an intellectual revolution here, which the president has embraced,” Wu told The New Yorker in July 2021. “Part of that effort is to bring back antitrust as a popular movement.”

In November 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued to block U.S. Sugar’s planned $315 million purchase of competitor Imperial Sugar. The department’s head of antitrust, Jonathan Kanter, said the two companies “are already multibillion-dollar corporations and are seeking to further consolidate an already cozy sugar industry.” Kanter w