Justice Department Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater during a speech at Notre Dame Law School on Monday detailed the case against big tech, saying that the Trump administration’s “America First Antitrust” is about empowering “America’s forgotten men and women.”
Slater delivered an address at the University of Notre Dame Law School, speaking about the conservative, historical, and textual roots for antitrust enforcement.
“Notre Dame has a storied role in the development of American conservatism’s first principles. I hold those principles dear and, as I will discuss today, our enforcement of the antitrust laws will reflect those principles,” Slater remarked. “Indeed, we seek to bring these shared principles to our work every day: they include American patriotism; textualism and adherence to precedent; and a firm commitment to law enforcement.”
Slater spoke as the court a federal court is moving through its remedies proceedings in front of Judge Amit Mehta after the judge ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly on the search market. The remedies for addressing Google’s monopoly on search include selling the Google Chrome browser and preventing Google from using exclusive agreements to use Google search on tech platforms and devices. Breitbart News has extensively reported on the Trump antitrust case against Google.
“Worse still, Google has called the DOJ’s proposed remedies ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible.’ Not so. You know what is dangerous? The threat Google presents to our freedom of speech, to our freedom of thought, to free American digital markets. You know what is irresponsible? Leaving Google’s monopoly abuse unaddressed,” Slater said in her opening arguments during the Google search remedies trial.
Slater will not be alone in working to enforce antitrust across the federal government.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson in February announced an agency task force to combat unfair and deceptive practices that harm American workers, saying that “the GOP is a workers party.”
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr, Slater, and Ferguson also held a meeting as they work to “smash the censorship cartel.”
Slater lamented in her speech that a collection of neoliberal policies, such as mass migration, “underenforced” antitrust laws, globalization, and financialization, the American economy underpins what is known as the “Washington Consensus.” Subsequently, she said, the Washington Consensus has run counter to creating the environment that enable Americans to achieve the American Dream.
“Antitrust law enforcement plays an indispensable role in achieving the American Dream because competitive markets enable individuals to achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. That’s the premise of free market capitalism. In free markets, the American people shape the economy toward their own flourishing by starting and growing their own business, and through their choices in markets as buyers and sellers. Competitive markets enable the American people to build the lives they want, not just as consumers and producers, but as citizens,” Slater explained.
Slater said that the roots American antitrust are as old as the American Revolution:
America First Antitrust empowers America’s forgotten men and women to shape their own economic destinies in the free market. We will stand for America’s forgotten consumers. We will stand for America’s forgotten workers. And we will stand for the small businesses and innovators, from Little Tech, to manufacturing, to family farms, that were forgotten by our economic policies for too long.
How will we accomplish this and what are our guiding principles? I submit we need only look to the past and to our conservative roots to find these principles. America First Antitrust roots are grounded in the Sherman Antitrust Act, but they in fact date back to our nation’s founding. Let us not forget that the Boston Tea Party was a protest not only against the British government’s taxation without representation, but also against the monopoly granted to the British East India Company. [Emphasis added]
“Finally, America First Antitrust continues the legacy of the Ohio Republican Senator John Sherman, the namesake of the Sherman Act, a true economic populist who never went to college, was a self-taught engineer, and became a lawyer under the apprenticeship of his brother,” she added.
Slater then summed up the three most important conservative values that “underpin” America First Antitrust, which include:
- The protection of individual liberty from both government and corporate tyranny.
- A healthy respect for textualism, originalism, and precedent grounded in a commitment to robust and fair law enforcement.
- A healthy fear of regulation that saps economic opportunity by stifling rather than promoting competition.
“Antitrust respects the moral agency of individuals by protecting their individual liberty from the tyranny of monopoly,” she added.
Slater noted that federal antitrust law has roots in English common law, citing that Sen. John Sherman in the late 1800s referred to common law, including “restraint of trade” and “monopolize” when writing the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Further, she said that America First antitrust seeks to focus on working-class America.
“America First Antitrust cares deeply about the average American in the heartland, and our efforts will focus on those markets that most directly affect their lives. We are here to serve all Americans and wish to move away from the deeply technocratic and elitist mindset that has imbued antitrust law and enforcement for several decades,” she said.
She concluded her speech, “But with President Trump’s clear commitment to fight in all those arenas for this country’s forgotten people, and with deep-rooted conservative principles to guide us, I believe we can build a truly great future for our children.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
