Among the monumental challenges facing the incoming Biden administration is how to address America’s massive—and growing—concentration problem. Faced with rising income and wealth inequalities, a dysfunctional health care system, an unaccountable tech industry, and an economic crisis that is proving to be catastrophic for small and medium-sized businesses, President-Elect Joe Biden will face a lot of pressure to present an antitrust agenda that is much more aggressive than his predecessors’.

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Zephyr Teachout is an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School and one of the most prominent voices within the New Brandeis movement (She is affiliated with the American Economic Liberties Project, or AELP). She has written two books and dozens of articles on the intersection of private law and the law of democracy, her latest book being Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money (Macmillan 2020). Her anti-corruption research has been cited in state and federal courts as well as in the Supreme Court.

Q: What are the main antitrust actions that the Biden administration should take?

It’s important to continue the Google case, of course, and there are ongoing investigations and promising new investigations that should be undertaken. But I actually think the key is starting a few steps back: for 40 years, agencies have misinterpreted existing antitrust law.

In 1890, 1914, 1921, and many other points, Congress gave the president the task—through the FTC, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies—of protecting workers and small businesses against abusive and extractive behavior. And since 1980, presidents have purposely misread that task and have been announcing that their task is to serve low consumer prices. So the first thing that Biden should do is clearly direct his agencies to do the job they were designed to do, which is to stop theft and abuse by big monopolists.

Right now, monopoly is the operating system of our society and is leading to radical inequality and enormous suffering, which has been compounded manyfold by the pandemic. The job of the president is to make sure that a fair, open, competitive, and flourishing society that works for workers and small businesses and communities is the operating system of our society.

I strongly advocate for the legislative changes that [Congressman David] Cicilline will push for. But that’s where I would start: we need to do a very fundamental switch in the understanding of antimonopoly laws and the role of the presidency. We actually haven’t had a president who has even tried their substantial rulemaking authority to really take on the democratic and economic threat of big monopolists since the Chevron Deference.