Source: United States Attorneys General
Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here today. It is an honor to represent the United States and work with the Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater and the amazing attorneys, economists, and staff and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. I also want to thank the IAPP for inviting me to participate in this 2025 Digital Policy Leadership Retreat and Jonathan Zittrain and David Sanger for joining this discussion on such an important and timely topic.
The world today has indeed become a digital world. Almost every company has some digital presence and almost every product sector is touched by digital platforms. Every day, platforms are connecting users and consumers in new and exciting ways. They are introducing novel commercial relationships with ever sophisticated algorithms. While we welcome these changes, we also recognize that these innovations introduce a range of competition issues. At the Department of Justice, we are watching these developments closely, scrutinizing the competitive implications of digital conduct.
The topic for my speech today is where we go from here in applying antitrust law and policy in the digital world. I won’t bury the lede. We are heading towards a better future for the American people that maximizes their consumer welfare in digital markets through the vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws. In fact, thanks to recent enforcement efforts, we are already beginning to see that world unfold.
Many doubted that would ever be possible. When digital markets first emerged, enforcers had for decades been accustomed mostly to smokestack industries. Products rolled off assembly lines with similar features and prices year after year. These things could be measured and scrutinized quantitatively. We came to think that’s all antitrust enforcers should do.
In contrast, digital markets offered zero price goods, with consumers trading their time and data for services. They were often defined by innovation and dynamism. Those looked like square pegs that didn’t fit the round holes of traditional antitrust analysis.
We had become so used to smokestack industries that many assumed consumer welfare should always be measured in the prices and outputs of the goods that rolled off the assembly line. Privacy, attention, choice, and innovation were afterthoughts. And so some suggested that there could be no antitrust enforcement in many digital markets because traditional measures of consumer welfare were difficult to apply.
Others accepted that premise, but pushed for a divorce between antitrust enforcement and the consumer welfare standard. They thought that to adequately protect competition in digital markets, antitrust needed to abandon its core focus on consumer welfare and have an essentially unlimited lens on its mission to include citizen welfare or a nebulous public interest standard.
We now know that there is a third way. Consumers’ welfare is not merely about the price they pay. Consumers benefit when their privacy is better protected. They pay for digital services in time, attention, and data. Consumer welfare rises when companies innovate, and new technologies disrupt incumbent technologies.
The answer was not to abandon antitrust in digital markets, or to abandon consumer welfare. The answer was to recognize the many dimensions of the competitive process that maximizes consumer welfare online.
I’d like to spend my time today talking about how that principle has played out in recent cases and will continue to inform our work in digital markets in the years to come.
First, our recent successes in protecting consumers from monopoly abuse in digital markets unequivocally demonstrate the continued vitality of the consumer welfare frame in protecting the American people online.
As many of you are aware, the Department of Justice has been vigorously enforcing the antitrust laws against the exclusionary and unlawful conduct of Big Tech for some time now, going back to the first Trump Administration. The DOJ currently has two large, ongoing litigations against Google in particular.
These are historic monopolization cases in which the DOJ earned landmark wins in federal district courts in Washington D.C. and Virginia, finding that Google is a serial monopolist — in general search, in search text advertising, and in multiple segments of the ad-tech stack. These rulings recognize that Google has abused its monopoly status by controlling how digital advertisements are placed on the free and open internet.
The DOJ has proven that Google repeatedly broke the law against monopolization. In response, we have proposed remedies tailored to restore competition and address the competitive harms of Google’s monopoly abuses.[1] In the Google Search case, a decision is expected by the end of the summer, following a three-week remedy hearing this spring. In Google Ad Tech, a remedies hearing is scheduled for early fall. We are hopeful that the federal courts in both cases will issue strong rulings that adopt structural and behavioral remedies to restore competition. Historic monopolization cases call for historic remedies, and our digital freedoms deserve nothing less.
The Google cases represent a bipartisan consensus in favor of vigorous antitrust enforcement. Beginning in the first Trump Administration, these cases reflect an historic commitment by both Republican and Democratic Administrations and almost every State Attorney General to protect consumers from monopoly abuse.
Both of these cases were won with evidence presented within a consumer welfare frame, expanded to account for the unique properties of digital markets. We defined consumer welfare broadly to include not only price, but also quality, output, innovation and anything else that impacts consumers. And we recognized that consumer welfare impacts do not always need to involve the kind of quantitative evidence available in a price-focused case, but that qualitative non-price evidence can be equally valuable.
Judge Mehta’s opinion in Google Search is a great example of the modern approach to addressing all of the determinants of consumer welfare. It mentions privacy 55 times. For example, when assessing the relevant market, it notes how Google compares its privacy to Duck Duck Go.[2] And its overall market definition approach appropriately takes account for the full range of qualitative evidence that bears on defining competition in search. Meanwhile, the Google Ad Tech opinion reminds its readers that the antitrust laws are a “consumer welfare prescription,” and then goes on to examine the many unique attributes of consumer welfare, beyond price and output, in the ad tech markets Google monopolized there.[3]
While we assess the full range of determinants of consumer welfare, that does not mean our analysis is unlimited. The ultimate question for antitrust law remains economic competition in a relevant market. The law does not permit an untethered overall public interest analysis that asks courts to weigh effects across markets or to include non-competition values.
For that reason, we consistently reject arguments that we should excuse harm to competition in order to protect a national champion firm on the theory that this will somehow benefit national security. We don’t accept the premise that shielding our businesses from competition somehow makes us stronger. That’s the Chinese and Russian way. The American way of winning the global economic competition is with strong competition in our domestic firms that makes our companies stronger to compete abroad. That premise has served us well for centuries, and we do not intend to abandon it now.
Let me offer a word of thanks to those who prosecuted these cases. The incredible attorneys, economists, and staff at the Antitrust Division that prosecuted the Google Search case deserve particular mention. Following a ten-week liability trial in 2023 and then a three-week remedies trial in 2025, they outlawyered the other side by presenting strong legal theories in support of critical remedies designed to ensure that our digital spaces will be free and open. No matter what the federal court orders in the remedies phase, the leadership at the Division is incredibly proud of the hard work and dedication of the public servants who have litigated that case.
As Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater has said, “The Google Search case matters because nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake here. Are we going to give Americans choices and allow innovation and competition to thrive online? Or will we maintain the status quo that favors Big Tech monopolies? If Google’s conduct is not remedied, it will control much of the internet for the next decade and not just in internet search, but in new technologies like artificial intelligence.”[4]
As for the Google Ad Tech case, the extraordinary attorneys have won a landmark liability ruling and we anticipate that they will present a strong case for robust remedies in the digital ad tech space. As Attorney General Pam Bondi has said, the ruling in the Antitrust Division’s favor in April in that case was “a landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.” I could not agree more. We are fortunate to have such quality attorneys working to protect the American public.
Let me now turn to some of our thinking about how we will protect consumer welfare in digital markets in the future. Digital technologies have significant implications for virtually all the monopoly conduct and cartels that the DOJ analyzes today. The DOJ has an obligation to husband our resources to enforce the laws where it matters most, to protect markets that most directly impact the average American, markets such as healthcare, housing, agriculture, education, and insurance. Let me focus on just a few of those digital markets.
In healthcare, in particular, we have a mandate to use our resources to ensure American markets in health sectors are more competitive, innovative, affordable, and provide higher quality to patients and consumers. For years, we have witnessed consolidation across healthcare leading to higher prices and lower wages for healthcare workers. We see pharmacy benefit managers and brand name monopolies driving up prescription drug prices. Consolidation and roll-ups of physician practices and hospitals often increase health care costs, raising prices for services, and deteriorating patient outcomes. And algorithms and data increase complexity by playing an ever-larger role in health care markets and practices. We are even seeing algorithmic management technologies gaining a foothold in the health care labor sector, one of the largest labor sectors in the country.[5]
Our recent Las Vegas nursing case is an example of the Department of Justice protecting Americans’ pocketbooks in the health sector. In that case, the Division successfully prosecuted a three-year conspiracy to fix the wages of nurses — capping their wages. As AAG Slater has stated: “Wage-fixing agreements are nakedly unlawful attempts at unjustly profiting off American workers…. The nurses here deserved better, and under President Trump’s leadership, they will be protected.”[6]
The DOJ is committed to combatting monopoly abuse and collusion in the health care sector. This includes collusion that is accomplished by digital algorithms. Our recent statement of interest in the In re Multiplan Health Insurance Provider Litigation is an example.[7] In that case, competitors used a common pricing algorithm to share confidential information to set prices. Such algorithmic sharing of confidential information on digital platforms should be challenged as a violation of the antitrust laws.
The DOJ is focused on algorithmic collusion in housing markets as well. The Division is litigating an ongoing case against RealPage and large landlords for algorithmic collusion affecting the rental prices for millions of Americans.[8] In this case, RealPage has introduced a digital platform that made it easier for landlords to coordinate to dramatically increase rental prices for the average American. RealPage and large landlords actively participated in the illegal pricing scheme, setting their rents by using each other’s competitively sensitive information via common pricing algorithms.[9]
These cases are examples of a growing trend. If we do not take a strong stand now against algorithmic collusion, we will see this new form of price fixing destroying effective competition across a whole range of digital markets.
And still there is more. Algorithmic collusion is only a subset of the issues that algorithms raise for antitrust enforcement. We can see on the horizon new concerns that will be extremely difficult for enforcers to address using traditional antitrust law. Academic work is already exploring how artificial intelligence can be instructed to profit maximize and learn to set prices in a manner consistent with collusion. We are on the verge of autonomous algorithmic collusion.
Regardless of the digital sector, we at the DOJ will follow the facts and apply the law in connection with algorithmic pricing and potential collusion. These issues provide an opportunity for our enforcers to engage critically with the practical realities of how complex technologies are affecting Americans’ lives today and in the future. Artificial intelligence holds so much promise, but it also presents unique challenges. Will these technologies empower anticompetitive behavior targeted at unsuspecting digital citizens? The DOJ must meet this moment and fulfill its mandate to protect competition for the American people.
Let me conclude with a few thoughts about the Antitrust Division’s agenda with respect to mergers in the digital space.
When President Trump announced that Gail Slater would lead the Antitrust Division, he reiterated that Big Tech has stifled Little Tech innovation and competition. We are pro Little Tech and welcome Little Tech innovation. We will bring the antitrust laws to bear on Big Tech to answer for their abuses, but we are open and receptive to procompetitive mergers, especially in Little Tech. We want innovative start-ups to see exit opportunities other than acquisitions by the largest, most dominant players, whose acquisition strategies are often driven as much by their desire to entrench their existing power as they are to drive innovation. The enforcers at the DOJ work tirelessly to promote a competitive landscape to ensure that new ideas get funding, so that startups can compete on the merits and disrupt incumbents.
An embrace of Little Tech recognizes the benefits of venture capital and digital mergers. We want to see venture capital funds flowing to support innovative companies. In healthy, competitive markets, venture capital funds should flow freely.
During AAG Slater’s tenure at the Division, we will challenge anticompetitive mergers. That is already evident in these early months. But the vast majority of mergers do not raise competition concerns, and those that do often can be resolved through negotiation, settlements, and consent decrees. We are committed to providing clear guidance to merging parties on their proposed transactions, welcoming most mergers and only challenging the problematic ones.
In conclusion, let me state what an honor it is for me to return to the Antitrust Division and serve as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General to AAG Slater. As part of the Republican realignment, President Trump and Assistant Attorney General Slater have a clear vision for robust antitrust enforcement over the next four years. Our paramount focus will be to put consumer welfare first, accounting for the wide range of harms and benefits to consumers and workers that can arise in modern markets.
Yes, competition brings lower prices. But it also brings better quality, improved privacy options, lower advertising loads, greater data portability, more choice, and increased innovations. Competition maximizes consumer welfare by driving businesses to deliver everything consumers want. That makes it the critical tool to protect consumers in our free market system, even in a changing world.
Thank you.