1. Conventional wisdom on antitrust enforcement is that
Democrats are more interventionist than Republicans, which, at face
value, suggests that there will be an uptick in enforcement under
President Biden. But convention alone does not tell the whole story
as a number of dynamics will influence antitrust policy during the
Biden administration.
2. Antitrust policy under the Trump administration was anything
but conventional, as Trump maintained a much more populist agenda
than previous Republican administrations and was far more
politically charged than any administration in recent memory. Due
to Trump's hyped-up rhetoric on antitrust relative to other
Republican administrations, the "gap" between Trump and
Biden may not be as pronounced as other transitions from one party
to another, though we should expect more predictable enforcement,
less influenced by political pressures, at least on individual
matters.
