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President Joe Biden announced today that he will appoint Jonathan Kanter as Deputy Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. Kanter is a lawyer known for his criticism of Google and will take over the antitrust division as he contemplates a Biden plan to reverse harmful mergers and break monopolies.
Kanter “is a distinguished antitrust lawyer with over 20 years of experience” and has been “a leading lawyer and expert in efforts to promote strong and meaningful antitrust and competition policy,” the statement said. of the White House.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) Applauded the nomination in a statement. “For years, Jonathan Kanter has been a leader in efforts to increase the enforcement of antitrust laws against monopolies by federal, state and international competition authorities. Antitrust Division of Justice, ”Klobuchar said.
Kanter represented companies against Google
Kanter founded the Kanter Law Group, described by the White House as a “boutique-style antitrust law firm that advocates for the enforcement of federal and state antitrust laws.” The firm’s website says Kanter represents clients before the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Congress and state attorneys general. Kanter also worked as an attorney at the FTC’s Competition Bureau between 1998 and 2000.
“Under the Obama administration, Microsoft made a commitment [Kanter] to push antitrust officials to take action against Google. Most recently, he has represented clients, including Yelp Inc., who urged the Department of Justice to sue Google last year, ”Bloomberg wrote today.
“Antitrust law enforcement is barely on life support,” Kanter said at an Amazon event in 2016 as quoted by Bloomberg. “When was the last time you remember a big antitrust agency that filed a monopolization case? The reason you can’t remember is that they didn’t.”
Kanter: Google has “a long history of prejudicing content providers”
Also in 2016, Kanter wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Don’t Hand Our TVs To Google.” Kanter’s editorial criticized then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to offer consumers more choice in set-top boxes by requiring cable and satellite television companies to provide content and programming information to manufacturers of third-party hardware or applications. Kanter argued that Wheeler’s plan, which was never adopted despite opposition from cable companies, “threatens to replace a set of powerful gatekeepers with a new one: Google.”
Kanter described some of his views on Google in this editorial, writing:
The FCC must ensure that Google does not adopt the same behavior when users search from their TV. In the absence of FCC oversight, the filing says, Google will prioritize its own video services in search results, just as it does today for purchases, news and other categories.
Google also has a long history of hurting content providers. To attract users and advertisers to its services, Google needs content. But it loses advertising dollars due to additional searches when users click away from its search engine. It therefore often copies this content, sometimes in small pieces, from third parties.
For example, Google’s image search engine displays high-resolution, large-format images from third-party sites, thus promoting piracy. Google also appears to favor sites that rely on ads over subscription fees, a practice that has squeezed media profit margins. These types of practices deprive content providers of revenue and hamper investments in content creation.
Kanter’s DOJ could sue big tech companies
Biden’s recent executive order encouraged the DOJ and the FTC “to vigorously enforce antitrust laws” and “challenge past bad mergers that previous administrations had not challenged before,” the White House said.
As the head of the antitrust division, Kanter would decide whether to take legal action against companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, all of which are under scrutiny by Congress, Democrats proposing tougher antitrust rules that could shatter big tech companies. Kanter’s work would complement that of Lina Khan, an antitrust scholar and bigtech critic who became president of the FTC in mid-June.
“Kanter has the right expertise and holds the right values for this time in technology and communications policy,” said Charlotte Slaiman, director of competition policy at consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. “The public needs a Deputy Attorney General with both the strong legal savvy and the daring to challenge gatekeepers and consolidated markets, including broadband providers and digital platforms. Jonathan Kanter corresponds to this bill. ”
Biden takes a long time on nominations
Kanter’s appointment must be approved by the Senate, and Slaiman urged senators to confirm Kanter quickly. The process will probably take a few months. Former President Donald Trump’s former antitrust chief Makan Delrahim was appointed by Trump in early April 2017 and confirmed by the Senate on September 27 of the same year. Khan was confirmed to the FTC just under three months after Biden named her.
It took about 180 days for Biden to appoint an antitrust chief. It’s the longest since President Jimmy Carter, who “took 168 days to nominate John Shenefield for the job,” Politico wrote earlier this month. The 168-day wait was previously the longest “in modern US history,” but in this case, “Shenefield had already taken the lead in acting antitrust in May. [of 1977]”Politico wrote.
Biden has also been slow with other nominations. He must appoint a member of the Federal Communications Commission to break the 2-2 deadlock between Democrats and Republicans, and he still has to choose an FCC chairman. Jessica Rosenworcel has been the interim president throughout Biden’s tenure so far, but has been crippled by the lack of a Democratic majority.
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