What Americans Really Think About Antitrust

December 17, 2021

While national polls show President Biden’s approval rating slipping down into the 30s, boosters of his administration often claim high approval ratings for the president’s progressive agenda. Tim Wu, the White House aide who helps coordinate Biden’s antitrust policy with agencies across the government, recently claimed that 67% of Americans polled believe the federal government should do more to counter the power of monopolies.

I accept that this poll number is literally accurate. If you stop people on the street and ask them whether something should be done about the power of monopolies, most would say “sure.” Who wants unchecked monopolies running around causing who-knows-what havoc? This is a typical result of a leading question laden with emotional language, guaranteed to get the result you want. But there is more to public attitudes about antitrust policy than just push-poll questions that lack alternatives.

Seeking a deeper understanding, my organization, the Antitrust Education Project, commissioned Public Opinion Strategies to survey 1,000 registered voters in June. Our poll posed priorities to respondents, forcing them to choose the leading options when a decision is made. We asked: “Which do you lean towards thinking is more important when a decision is being made about whether or not a corporation should be broken up into smaller companies? Protecting the corporation’s customers or protecting the businesses against which that corporation competes?”

Our question cut to the heart of the prevailing Consumer Welfare Standard on which current antitrust cases are adjudicated. Under this 47-year-old standard, courts will intervene in a merger, acquisition, or business practice only when there is evidence of harm to consumers. Wu, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, and the Biden administration want to erode the Consumer Welfare Standard and broaden the law to protect competitors instead of competition, while enforcing vaguely defined notions of “equity.”

The results of our poll were informative. More than two-thirds of those surveyed disagreed with the premise that antitrust should protect competitors. Some 54% of voters went with the Consumer Welfare Standard, as did 50% of Republicans and Independents. Interestingly, 58% of Democrats chose the standard as being more important than protecting competitors.

The poll next asked respondents in a very neutral way to choose whether 1) current laws work, or 2) they work but need better enforcement, or 3) they don’t work well enough, and some new laws are needed, or 4) current antitrust laws are broken and need major change.

Some 53% chose the first option, that the current laws work. Of that majority, 41% agreed that we also need better enforcement of those laws. Only 13% said that antitrust laws are broken and need major change.

When asked whether partisan politics should play a role in antitrust, 83% said no – with 40% “strongly” in opposition. Clearly, large bipartisan majorities oppose any partisanship in antitrust. Yet this is exactly what is happening now. At Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission and in several proposed new laws on Capitol Hill, social extremism is being injected into laws and regulations intended to enforce fair competition in our economy.

One would likely get different results when asking American voters about antitrust and Big Tech, which has managed to alienate both liberals and conservatives with echo-chamber algorithms and content-management censorship. But the overall results of our poll hold up for applying antitrust to the economy at large. It is likely that as Americans learn more about the radical nature of progressive antitrust proposals – whether antitrust bills being advanced in Congress or those enforced by fiat by the FTC, subjecting almost every business decision by any company of size to government sanction – a substantial majority for the Consumer Welfare Standard would become a lopsided majority.

These results point to a larger danger for political and corporate elites who’ve convinced themselves, and try to convince others, that the progressive social extremist agenda is overwhelmingly popular. That claim was demolished earlier this month by the only polls that really count, the ones that allowed Republicans to sweep Virginia and instill fear into the heart of New Jersey Democrats. This is a sure sign the woke craze that infected American politics and business – inspiring staid executives of companies like Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines to demonize Americans who support bringing government IDs to polling stations as racists – should finally be cresting against the firm seawall of common sense and American opinion.

Those in power, whether in Congress or the C-suite, should ignore the populist claims of the Biden administration and the polls they cite. The American voter and consumer are not onboard with any of this, whether allowing federal antitrust regulators in Washington, D.C., to gain leverage over all of business, or allowing a “woke” elite of school administrators write and mandate radical curricula for schools.

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