Is the DOJ finally done playing games with the economy?
It hardly sounds like a compliment to be described as “Hillbilly Antitrust,” but Gail Slater—now heading the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division—has embraced the label with characteristic bluntness. But there may be reason to cheer.
In the past, Slater has made some pro-regulation assertions. She’s expressed skepticism of companies with large market share, particularly in her ongoing pursuit of the nation’s leading tech companies. She’s also not shy about viewing size itself as suspect, and her alignment with JD Vance—who managed to praise both her and Biden’s radical appointee Lina Khan—doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that a full return to rational antitrust is imminent.
But her more recent comments suggest a real, and badly needed, pivot away from the Biden-era approach to antitrust enforcement, so we may be at least cautiously optimistic.
In April at the Little Tech Competition Summit, Slater signaled that economists—those long-sidelined or ignored under Biden’s ideological antitrust regime—are finally back at the table. That may sound like a small shift. It’s not. It could mark the beginning of a course correction.
Slater reaffirmed that, going forward, the DOJ will rely on actual economic analysis to determine whether a case should be pursued. In her words, “We are expected to have a testifying expert” when a case goes to trial.
Why is this significant? Because, at the very least, it signals a desire to start grounding enforcement on facts rather than vibes.
That’s a welcome change from the Biden years, when antitrust became an ideological crusade against bigness, even if companies earned consumer loyalty in the marketplace. Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter at the DOJ spent the past four years playing the regulatory equivalent of Calvinball—a game from Calvin and Hobbes where the rules were made up on the fly and never repeated.
It even had its own theme song:
Other kids’ games are all such a bore!
They’ve gotta have rules and they gotta keep score!
Calvinball is better by far!
It’s never the same! It’s always bizarre!
Fun for six-year-olds with imaginary tiger friends. Less fun when applied to trillion-dollar markets and merger decisions.
Instead of assessing whether deals helped or harmed consumers, Khan and Kanter embraced a law-school-bred theory that big companies are bad for democracy. In her paper “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” Khan argued that “excessive concentration of economic power will breed antidemocratic political pressures.” Maybe so—but there’s no Standardized Democracy Unit to measure that, and good luck finding a court that can quantify it.
The result? A stream of high-profile flops.
Biden’s DOJ blocked the JetBlue–Spirit Airlines merger, arguing that it would reduce competition. But the real outcome? Spirit, already struggling, filed for bankruptcy, leaving consumers with fewer low-cost options. A win for no one but the Big Four airlines, which have 70% of the market. Any economist could’ve seen that coming—if the DOJ had bothered to ask one.
Or take the DOJ suit against Visa for allegedly monopolizing debit networks—despite the fact that consumers today have no shortage of payment options: Mastercard, regional networks, fintech startups, plus Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and so on. There’s been no great consumer exodus, no price shock, and no evidence of monopoly behavior—just a large company in a competitive space. Khan’s own staff grew frustrated. A former FTC official told a reporter in 2023 that the “entire approach” was “incoherent.”
Now, with Slater in charge, there’s hope for change—even if only partial. She’s no free-market absolutist. She made clear she has no use for economists who are “ideologically opposed to antitrust enforcement” or think “big is beautiful.” This hybrid framework—what Slater calls “MAGA Antitrust”—won’t fully return to the old guardrails. But it may bring sanity back into the room.
Yes, Slater has JD Vance’s confidence, and yes, Vance said a few kind words about Lina Khan on the campaign trail. So no one should expect a full restoration of the old Reagan-era standard based on the well-being of consumers. But if Slater’s approach reins in the worst excesses of the past four years—if it brings data back into fashion and reins in the Calvinball mindset—then it’s a step in the right direction.
Antitrust policy should never be about symbolism or score-settling. It should be about outcomes. If Slater can steer the DOJ toward a fact-driven, consumer-focused posture—even a hybrid one—that’s good news for markets, innovation, and American growth.
