On August 13, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order repealing Joe Biden’s July 2021 directive on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” That Biden-era order empowered Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to expand government control over mergers and acquisitions across industries ranging from airlines to Big Tech.
As Norm Singleton writes in the Libertarian Institute, “This approach explains why during the Biden years the government filed two and a half times as many antitrust lawsuits as were filed during either the first Trump or Barack Obama administrations.”
The Biden/Khan strategy was not about enforcing the law, but about testing the limits of government power: “Some of the record number of cases brought during Lina Khan’s ‘reign of terror and error’ at the FTC were brought even against the recommendations of the FTC’s professional staff.”
Trump’s Shift
According to Singleton, Trump’s repeal of Biden’s order signals an end to the “war on business” and a return to a more restrained view of antitrust: “This will benefit businesses of all sizes—as well as consumers and workers.”
At the same time, Trump’s FTC and DOJ are not without fault. Singleton points out that while less hostile to markets, Andrew Ferguson (FTC) and Gail Slater (DOJ Antitrust Division) have embraced using antitrust to advance political ends. For example, they conditioned approval of an advertising merger on barring the company from “discriminating” against political websites in ad placements.
A Dangerous Precedent
The risks of politicizing antitrust were highlighted when a federal court struck down an FTC investigation into Media Matters, finding it violated the First Amendment. As Singleton warns in the Libertarian Institute, “Those tempted to support the FTC because of Media Matters’ history of smearing anyone to the right of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) should consider how this precedent could be used by a future Democrat-controlled FTC against conservative advertisers, websites, and social media platforms.”
Conclusion
Trump’s executive order is a welcome rollback of Biden’s failed antitrust crusade. But as Singleton stresses, weaponizing antitrust against “woke” companies poses dangers of its own. “Hopefully, the recent court loss will cause the FTC and the Justice Department to stop using antitrust as an excuse to violate the First Amendment.”
