President-elect Donald Trump is making it clear he doesn’t intend to ease up on the nation’s technology giants once he is back in the Oval Office.
The latest sign came Wednesday when he said he would nominate Gail Slater, an aide to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
“Big Tech has run wild for years,” Trump said in a statement announcing the appointment on his Truth Social platform, “stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!”
“I was proud to fight these abuses in my First Term, and our Department of Justice’s antitrust team will continue that work under Gail’s leadership,” he added.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket, in Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 19 . Brandon Bell/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo ·Reuters / Reuters
The appointment and comments from the president-elect offer a new signal that his administration could press forward with a series of investigations and lawsuits challenging the way the biggest companies in the technology industry, including Google (GOOG, GOOGL), maintain their dominance.
It was Trump’s first administration that initially sued Google over antitrust concerns, which led to a ruling by a district court judge in August that the tech giant illegally monopolized the search engine market. The DOJ has asked a judge to consider breaking up the company in a separate phrase of the trial that won’t wrap up until 2025.
It was also during Trump’s first administration that the Federal Trade Commission sought to unwind Meta’s (META) acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in a case set for trial in April. Trump’s first administration also launched an antitrust investigation into Apple (APPL), leading the Biden administration to sue the iPhone maker earlier this year.
Another ominous sign for Big Tech is that last month Trump nominated Brendan Carr as Federal Communications Commission chair.
Just days before he got that chairmanship appointment, Carr sent letters to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook predicting “broad ranging actions to restore Americans’ First Amendment rights” once Trump takes office.
Brendan Carr, Trump’s pick to be FCC boss. Photo: Alex Wong/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo ·Reuters / Reuters
That might include “a review of your companies’ activities as well as third-party organizations and groups that have acted to curtail those rights,” according to a copy of the letter Carr posted to X.
The appointment of Slater to run the DOJ’s antitrust division elevates a figure who was a tech policy adviser at the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term. She earlier spent a decade at the Federal Trade Commission, including as an adviser to former Democratic FTC Commissioner Julie Brill during President Barack Obama’s administration.
The FTC shares with the DOJ responsibility for enforcing the nation’s antitrust laws.
In the private sector, Slater held positions at Fox Corp. and Roku. She also worked for the since-dismantled lobbying organization Internet Association that advocated for the country’s most powerful tech firms.
The companies included Amazon (AMZN), Airbnb (ABNB), Facebook (META), Google, eBay (EBAY), Microsoft (MSFT), Spotify (SPOT), Uber (UBER), X, and Zillow (Z).
Slater’s boss Vance has expressed admiration for the approach of FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has gained a reputation for aggressively pursuing lawsuits and investigations targeting the biggest tech giants.
Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly ·REUTERS / Reuters
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Khan had launched a wide-ranging antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence businesses.
It is still not known whether Trump will seek to replace Khan, and with whom. Slater has acted as adviser to the administration on that subject.
There is also no guarantee Khan’s replacement will hold a similar point of view, or continue her pursuits.
“We don’t know who’s going to succeed Lina Khan, but you can bet it’s not going to be anyone with the philosophy of Lina Khan,” said former FTC member and University of Baltimore Law School antitrust professor Robert Lande.
Trump has sent some mixed messages about how he far he wants to go to hold tech firms accountable.
While campaigning, he was asked whether he supported a breakup of Google as an antidote to unhealthy competition in the search engine market. Trump suggested that Google’s punishment could be accomplished without forcing it to sell off parts of its empire.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet Inc. REUTERS/Carlos Barria ·REUTERS / Reuters
“What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair,” Trump said in an Oct. 15 interview. The former president described Google’s search engine as “rigged” and expressed concern that consequences for Google in the case could favor China.
On Wednesday, Google’s CEO Pichai said of Trump that “in my conversations with him, he’s definitely very focused on American competitiveness, particularly in technology, including AI.”
When asked at a New York Times DealBook summit in New York if Trump’s election changes the dynamic for Google’s antitrust case, he said “this is a DOJ case, and the case is already in court,” noting that it started under Trump’s first term.
“So I don’t have any particular insights into that.” The company, he added, will “defend ourselves there.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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