Trump’s Vice Presidential Candidate Supports Antitrust Crackdown on Big Tech

By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s former vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, openly praised the work of Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, a signal that the agency’s comprehensive approach to antitrust enforcement may enjoy some level of support from the second Trump administration.

Vance, a Republican U.S. senator from Ohio, joined the presidential field on Monday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump was officially nominated by the party.

Vance is one of several GOP lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, nicknamed the “Khanservatives” for their agreement with the FTC chairman that U.S. antitrust law has a broader purpose than just lowering prices for consumers.

“She recognized that there needed to be a broader understanding of how we think about competition in the marketplace,” Vance said at an event in Washington in February.

The comments reflect a tension within the conservative movement between wanting to rein in regulatory agencies and wanting to use antitrust laws to challenge powerful corporations — especially big tech companies, where some hope to combat perceived censorship of conservatives online.

Joseph Coniglio, director of antitrust policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said Vance falls into the latter group.

“I think the selection of Senator Vance as vice president certainly sends a signal in one direction,” Coniglio said. His think tank receives funding from several major technology companies.

Overseeing Big Tech would not be a departure from Trump. The FTC and Justice Department under Trump have launched investigations into Meta, Amazon, Apple and Google for alleged antitrust violations. All four companies were eventually sued and denied wrongdoing.

Vance is a Yale-educated venture capitalist and lawyer who worked at Sidley Austin and helped Trump raise money in Silicon Valley. He has also called for breaking up a major company.

“It’s long overdue to break up Google,” Vance wrote on Twitter in February, lamenting that “monopolistic control of information in our society belongs to a demonstrably progressive tech company.”

The question remains what a potential second Trump administration will focus on. The Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy platform Project 2025 discusses ways conservative causes can be advanced by antitrust enforcement agencies, but it also questions whether the FTC should continue to exist.

Business groups are criticizing President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcement for moving beyond traditional considerations of how competition affects prices to focus on issues like jobs.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit seeking to block a recent FTC ban that would have required employers to require employees to sign agreements not to join rivals or start competing businesses.

At an event in February hosted by Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, Vance said his view on antitrust is not limited to helping small businesses become more competitive, but also applies to workers and the quality of consumer goods.

He disagreed with the view of some conservatives that corporate behavior cannot be “tyrannical.”

“I want people to live good lives in our country,” he said. “I really don’t care whether the entity that most threatens that vision is a private entity or a public entity.”

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)