J.D. Vance, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, has openly praised the work of Federal Trade Commission Chairperson Lina Khan, a sign that the agency’s broader approach to antitrust enforcement could find some level of support from a second Trump administration.
Vance, a Republican US senator from Ohio, entered the presidential race on Monday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump officially became the party’s nominee.
Vance is one of several Republican lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who called them “minservatives” for agreeing with the FTC chairman that the purpose of U.S. antitrust law is broader than keeping prices low for consumers.
“He recognized that we needed to broaden our thinking about competition in the marketplace,” Vance said at an event in Washington in February.
These comments reflect a tension in the conservative movement between a tendency to shrink regulatory agencies and a desire to use antitrust laws to challenge powerful corporations — particularly Big Tech, where some hope to tackle alleged censorship of conservatives online.
Vance is one of them, said Joseph Coniglio, director of antitrust policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
“I think the selection of Senator Vance as vice president certainly points in one direction,” said Coniglio, whose think tank receives funding from several major technology companies.
Scrutinizing Big Tech will be no change for Trump. Under Trump, the FTC and Justice Department launched investigations into Meta, Amazon, Apple and Google over alleged antitrust violations. All four companies were eventually sued and denied wrongdoing.
Vance is a Yale-educated lawyer and venture capitalist who worked at corporate law firm Sidley Austin and helped Trump raise funds in Silicon Valley. He has also called for the breakup of one of its biggest companies.
“It’s too late, but it’s time to break up Google,” Vance tweeted in February, lamenting the “monopolistic control an ostensibly progressive technology company has over information in our society.”
It remains to be seen what a potential second Trump administration will focus on. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy platform discusses ways conservative causes could be promoted by antitrust enforcers, but also questions whether the FTC should continue to exist.
Business groups have criticized President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers for moving beyond traditional considerations of the effect of competition on prices to focus on other issues, including labor.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit to block the FTC’s recent ban on employers requiring employees to sign agreements not to associate with competitors or start competing businesses.
At a February event hosted by Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, Vance said his view of antitrust law is not just limited to helping small companies compete, but also applies to workers and the quality of consumer goods.
He disagreed with the view of some conservatives that the behavior of corporations cannot be “tyrannical.”
“I want people in our country to live a good life,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether the greatest threat to that vision is a private entity or a public entity.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
