The Verge - J.D. Vance is anti-Big Tech, pro-crypto

Open Markets’ executive director Barry Lynn was quoted in an article in The Verge dismissing vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s ostensible antitrust credentials.

“VPs don’t set policy, presidents do,” Lynn said. “Bottom line is that Trump’s policies would destroy the federal government as we’ve known it since The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. And if you don’t have a functioning federal government, you can’t enforce antimonopoly law.”

It was an event with some of the biggest names in the modern antitrust reform movement, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Both have been advocates of refreshing what they see as an outdated view of American antitrust law, which they believe has allowed the largest tech companies to evade scrutiny, stifling the would-be upstarts that Y Combinator made its name investing in. 

Also speaking that day was Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), whom former President Donald Trump just named as his pick for vice president on the Republican ticket. Vance’s ties to Silicon Valley date back to before Trump was elected in 2016, when he worked for the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He was at the small DC event earlier this year to, perhaps surprisingly, share the same message as Warren and Khan: big tech needs to be reined in.

“The fundamental question to me is, how do we build a competitive marketplace that is pro-innovation, pro-competition, that allows consumers to have the right choices and isn’t just so obsessed on pricing power within the market that it sort of ignores all the other things that really matter?” Vance told the audience.

He went on to specifically praise Khan, the Biden official many of his Republican colleagues have sharply criticized for her aggressive stance on blocking tech deals. “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I actually think is doing a pretty good job,” he said at the Y Combinator event, which was dubbed RemedyFest, a reference to antitrust remedies such as breakups of companies.

Read full article here.