Kanter: “The Department of Justice has strongly encouraged Congress to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Tech Oversight Project spotlighted and praised remarks from Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. On Friday, Kanter delivered the keynote address at Fordham University’s 49th Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy and pulled no punches in taking on Big Tech’s monopolies and their biggest abuses that derail a healthy, functioning, and competitive economy. Below are selections from Assistant Attorney General Kanter’s remarks, and his remarks as prepared for delivery can be found here.

• “We now face a pressing challenge that demands an aggressive coordinated response from the competition law enforcement community. Unilateral exclusionary conduct—what we in the United States call monopolization—is ascendant.”

• “We have watched these changes lead to the collection of corporate power that threatens our liberty. The digital economy has enabled monopoly power of a nature and degree not seen in a century.”

• “Algorithms manipulate our psychology to shape our minds and our behavior, without competition for them to do so responsibly. With too little competition over privacy, we find our most intimate data mined and sold with abandon. The digital age is not only characterized by the presence of monopoly power, but by new means of its exploitation more threatening to individual freedom than ever before.”

• “Today’s monopolists can influence the interactions and behavior of customers and would-be competitors alike. They can pick winners and losers in adjacent markets, discourage switching to rival services, and punish entrepreneurs that stray too closely into competition. We have seen how exclusionary tactics exploiting this power can strengthen already-dominant positions and deepen the moat around a digital castle.”

• “Monopolies do not self-correct. We have all seen that in digital markets, monopolies self-sustain. Platforms that are fundamentally collaborative become critical trading partners for entire industries, and without competition have greater power to discourage rivalry.”

• “I…believe we can no longer be so cautious to avoid overenforcement that we intentionally underenforce the law.”

• “I believe that non-discrimination legislation will be a critical tool to discourage a wide range of exclusionary practices and give would-be competitors confidence that they are protected from retaliation. The Department of Justice has strongly encouraged Congress to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.”

• “At some point, there has to be an element of common sense. The monopoly power, the strength, the control that some of these firms exercise over our lives is so real, is so self-evident, and it’s something that the broader public fully understands.”