OP-ED

Why Are Trump Regulators Still Shouldering the Legacy of Lina Khan?

Trump’s antitrust enforcers are carrying forward Biden’s progressive crusade against Big Tech, abandoning consumer-focused standards in favor of politicized market punishment.

By Robert H. Bork, Jr.
January 28, 2026

Antitrust enforcement, for all its technical moorings and dense legal precedents, is a tell for any administration’s values and attitudes toward the free market.

It would be in character for the Biden Administration, so hostile to business and capitalism, to appeal a loss by the Federal Trade Commission in its antitrust complaint against Meta. But why are President Trump’s antitrust regulators the ones appealing the loss of this Biden-legacy suit in federal court?

The dogged pursuit of this case shows just how closely aligned some Trump regulators are with Biden’s FTC Chair Lina Khan and her progressive antitrust agenda.

In November, federal Judge James Boasberg rejected the FTC’s claim that the company had monopolized the agency’s definition of the “personal social networking” market. The FTC, apparently determined to demonstrate that any market definition can be gerrymandered, had limited this category to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and MeWe. By that definition, Meta commanded users’ attention 85 percent of the time. When Judge Boasberg added YouTube and TikTok, Facebook’s share of this limited market definition fell to around 30 percent—well below the threshold that courts have held to be a monopoly.

To even discuss monopolies in this space seems silly. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are free. They are in fierce competition with TikTok and other platforms to hold on to younger users. Funny cat videos and the antics of Mr. Bean bear no resemblance to the python grip of copper, oil, and railroad trusts that inspired the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Yet the FTC is determined to continue Khan’s claim that Meta’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago—transactions that were not contested by the government at that time—somehow permanently distorted the market. Judge Boasberg was having none of this. He wrote: “Like Heraclitus’s river, the rapids of social media rush along so fast that the Court has never even stepped into the same case twice … Each time it examined Meta’s apps, they had changed. The competitors had, too.”

Rather than take a loss for this deeply flawed legacy case, the FTC is appealing. Many legal observers believe the FTC’s chances of success on appeal are low. Here’s to hoping that when the FTC takes this case back to court, it will find that it is actually stepping into the same river—and that the water is ice-cold. But why is this administration taking that plunge? Why are Trump appointees so determined to carry this heavy load from their progressive predecessors?

It is not too late for the Trump administration to change course and affirm the centrality of the Consumer Welfare Standard, which would link antitrust enforcement with measurable ways to protect the interests of consumers. At a time when President Trump is being hammered on affordability, this would be a popular idea.

This would signal a clean break with the progressive philosophy of the recent past. Lina Khan and her fellow progressives saw the success of large corporations as the result of irredeemably corrupt business practices, while imagining that the inexorable forces of history are pushing markets toward ever-greater concentration. Conservatives, in contrast, focus antitrust cases on obvious conspiracies against the market. As my father, Judge Robert Bork, wrote in 1965, we need antitrust enforcement since “competition is desirable, therefore, because it assists in achieving a prosperous society and permits individual consumers to determine by their actions what goods and services they want most.”

This conservative view, codified since the late 1970s as the Consumer Welfare Standard, continues to prevail in courts, even among liberal judges like Boasberg. Oddly, however, the antitrust regulators of the Trump Administration are basing enforcement on progressive antitrust guidelines. The Trump FTC and the Justice Department Antitrust Division have wholly adopted the 2023 progressive antitrust guidelines of the Biden regulators, which list a lengthy menu of ways to stop any merger without detailing how these actions might benefit consumers.

The Trump antitrust enforcers, under the banner of “America First Antitrust,” thus continue the Biden Administration’s antitrust actions against some of our nation’s most successful companies. Trump regulators are pressing Khan’s lawsuit against Amazon, claiming that its policy of discounting somehow drives prices upward. They continue to argue for the breakup of Google, echoing the European Union’s efforts to destroy that company with colossal fines and sanctions.

Are these actions in the interests of American consumers? Are they in the interests of 10 million U.S. tech industry workers? Do they help or hurt mom-and-pop investors and pensioners? Is the continuation of these legacy antitrust actions really putting America first if they degrade our most competitive industry?

It is hard to escape the watchful eye of modern antitrust, whether it calls itself “progressive” or “America First.”

Robert H. Bork Jr. is president of the Antitrust Education Project.