Too big, too bad. That’s the antitrust outlook for 2023, distilled from conversations with antitrust practice leaders who believe the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice are taking aim at large corporations on a scale not seen since the first Roosevelt administration.
Since the Biden Administration articulated its antitrust policy in July 2021—instructing antitrust agencies to ramp up enforcement in the interest of lowering consumer prices and dismantling harmful labor market conditions—the FTC and DOJ have gone after Big Tech in actions against Alphabet and Meta, secured a criminal conviction for attempted monopolization, sought to end noncompete clauses, and taken more expansive views on underlying laws such as Section 5 of the FTC Act and Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
