Politico - Insiders look for signals that Kamala Harris would keep up one of Biden’s biggest fights

Executive director Barry Lynn points out that while there’s growing recognition of the harms of monopolies within the Democratic Party, the continuation of robust antitrust enforcement depends on sustained political will from future leaders.

Antitrust officials in Washington and their supporters across the political spectrum are asking whether Kamala Harris is fully committed to President Joe Biden’s crusade against America’s biggest companies.

Normally a back-burner issue in national politics, antitrust has become one of the White House’s top legacy issues — and increasingly urgent as Biden’s top corporate regulators have launched a fresh wave of major suits over insulin prices, financial services and rental costs.

On top of existing cases against Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Ticketmaster and more, that puts the next president in the position to empower a historic push against corporate growth, or stop it in its tracks.

What Harris chooses to do if she wins is “very important,” said Josh Tzuker, a former antitrust official at the Department of Justice, who joined the consulting firm FGS Global earlier this year. “The Biden Administration charted a course that is going to be really hard to change.”

Harris has said little about antitrust explicitly, but the signals she’s sent so far have been encouraging to some antitrust advocates.

As part of the economic policy plan that Harris released last week, Harris is supporting several Biden administration competition moves. She called out price-fixing by landlords — an issue the Justice Department is addressing in a suit against a software company. She also attacked grocery mergers while the Federal Trade Commission awaits a decision on its lawsuit to block the megadeal between Kroger and Albertsons.

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