Have Democrats Caught the Anti-Monopoly Bug?

Since the failure of “Bidenomics” to win popular acclaim, the Democratic Party has been torn over how to navigate a populist electorate and reform capitalism. Following the lead of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and former California Rep. Katie Porter, many Democrats have grown comfortable assailing Big Tech and Wall Street to a degree that was inconceivable a decade ago. Yet Trump’s radically disruptive second-term policies have also tempted prominent pro-trade Democrats like California governor Gavin Newsom and Colorado governor Jared Polis to present themselves as reliable allies of businesses seeking stable markets and supply chains.

In this volatile environment, Democrats are struggling to offer an agenda that combines an unflinching critique of economic predation and crony capitalism with a positive vision of inclusive development.

Nevertheless, there are signs that the party’s rising stars are trying to revamp anti-monopolism to strengthen their frayed coalition. California Rep. Ro Khanna, a staunch progressive from one of the country’s wealthiest districts and possible 2028 presidential candidate, has argued tougher antitrust legislation must undergird economic patriotism. Echoing Khanna, New York Rep. Pat Ryan—one DOGE’s fiercest critics and a former tech founder—launched the “Monopoly Busters Caucus” soon after co-founding the “New Economic Patriots” one in March.

Other pragmatic Democrats have latched onto niche positions within the broader anti-monopoly paradigm. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego has assailed junk fees, New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander has argued corporate consolidation undermines national security, and Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss has co-authored legislation targeting pharmacy benefit managers, a major source of inflated health care costs. Most recently, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is critical to keeping his party competitive in the Southeast, announced an investigation into “large out-of-state companies” vacuuming up Georgia’s housing stock—a practice trustbusters attribute to the market leverage of private equity “roll ups.”

This array of Democrats illustrates the potential of fighting monopoly power to be a unifying theme going forward. Although it is doubtful all of them would fully embrace the “trustbuster” mantle, their stances are a response to mounting economic frustrations that can’t be solved through welfare, middle-class tax cuts, higher wages, or targeted industrial policies. Weary from inflation and preponderant service fees across every conceivable transaction, American consumers and workers have become deeply suspicious of how prices are determined. The absence of transparency—and the feeling that one is helpless to protest unfair practices—has reinforced the sense that the economy is simply rigged against regular working families.

At the same time, the range of antitrust actions on the table can make for an unwieldy pitch. And voters’ low expectations of government continue to weigh on how Democrats discuss using regulation to discipline markets and serve the public interest. Many voters who swung to Trump in 2024 may lament what has since unfolded, especially DOGE’s arbitrary budget cuts and firings, but few seem nostalgic for the Biden era either. That makes it harder to reset the party’s image in places where anti-monopoly politics might otherwise gain traction.

The challenge for Democrats, then, is figuring out how to thread their various attacks on monopoly power into a cohesive message about restoring genuine economic opportunity and security. Of course, this problem has dogged the party since Joe Biden laid out a more assertive competition policy early in his administration. That initiative reflected years of diligent advocacy by “neo-Brandeisian” think tanks and consumer protection groups who fairly judged the Democratic Party as having neglected the nation’s antitrust laws since globalization and the spread of e-commerce, tech platforms, and consumer datamining. Its purpose was essentially threefold: to curb rent-seeking that saps purchasing power and productivity; bolster competition of the sort that fuels innovation and regional economic diversification; and crack down on practices that exacerbate financial distress.

The push for tougher business oversight and fair competition met with moderate success. Despite vocal opposition from Silicon Valley and other business lobbies, Biden’s antitrust team deterred or postponed several mergers, advanced a handful of groundbreaking lawsuits and rules, and in some cases issued civil penalties to compensate defrauded consumers. Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC chair, earned high marks from polling respondents, particularly for her attempt, later thwarted by a district court, to ban anti-worker noncompete agreements. Public advocacy also transformed how Pete Buttigieg, another likely presidential contender, approached his mandate as Transportation Secretary, setting a possible template for sector-specific competition policies in a future Democratic administration.

Perhaps even more than Biden’s manufacturing subsidies and “post-neoliberal” trade agenda, the new antitrust doctrine marked a sharp break with economic orthodoxy. But it arguably suffered from uneven support. Outside of veteran antitrust advocates like Sen. Warren and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, it was left to individual appointees across different agencies and departments to press the administration’s case and dust off forgotten policy tools. Biden’s unconvincing leadership was also a hindrance. Last year, there was little in the way of a counterresponse by the White House when powerful CEOs denounced Khan and other trustbusters, fueling speculation that the party elite were weakly attached to the reforms Biden himself had encouraged. His listless attacks on junk fees and “shrink-flation,” meanwhile, failed to convey to the public how effective antitrust action has historically been integral to the health of democratic capitalism.

In the end, the antitrust component of “Bidenomics” didn’t fare much better in the public eye than the Keynesian or Hamiltonian parts. Amid Trump’s relentless attacks on inflation, Kamala Harris’s aborted promise to tackle “price-gouging” during the fall campaign merely intensified perceptions that Democrats were vexed over how to remedy the cost-of-living crisis. None of Harris’s surrogates stepped up to explain that fair competition was central to the party’s original ethos, leaving many to wonder what her vague “opportunity economy” amounted to. Only when faced with the spectacle of Trump’s billionaire cabinet and the fallout from DOGE’s early rampage did the party ramp up a tougher anti-monopoly message.

---

Now, of course, the party’s budding anti-monopolists are no longer so burdened by Biden’s unpopularity. Trump’s tumultuous first hundred days have reawakened fears over unconstrained executive power and quid pro quo regulatory favors, while his trade war has many girding for a new bout of inflation. Still, for the anti-monopoly framework to work politically in 2026 and 2028, Democrats will have to separate its ideas from a Democratic administration that—fairly or not—was seen as promising far more than it delivered.

Most centrally, Democrats must explain how policing monopolistic behavior and boosting consumer protection are about more than redressing market abuses that have already occurred. A comprehensive competition policy can prevent underhanded business practices and spread markets and capital formation to underserved regions, as antitrust enforcement did in the mid-twentieth century. If the party’s younger leaders channel that legacy of Wilsonian and New Deal liberalism, they will be in a better position to communicate how “decentralized” and “deconcentrated” markets can help furnish shared prosperity.

That said, it remains to be seen how much the party’s various antitrust bills and congressional investigations are meant to serve as the foundation for a new party platform. Washington is notorious for tough-sounding press releases and promising reforms that disappear from the national conversation or die in committee. Moreover, in a Republican congress overwhelmingly dominated by libertarians and Trump loyalists, Democrats are hard-pressed to find allies for any initiatives to curb market predation and other practices that fetter upward mobility. Inevitably, some of this antitrust work is a way for newer Democrats to hone their policy chops and jockey for influence in a coalition that knows it’s bled working-class voters but isn’t sure what mix of economic priorities will win them back.

As the party in opposition, Democrats are also desperate for a raison d'être that makes for a compelling media narrative. “Resistance 2.0,” largely centered on lawsuits by Democratic state attorneys general, isn’t mobilizing the electorate on the scale witnessed from 2017-2019. One likely reason for anti-monopolism’s resurgence is that it is offers another way to attack Trump’s conflicts of interest and link them to his failure thus far to tackle exorbitant costs. Between Trump neutering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the strong possibility that major multinationals will exploit his tariffs by topping off passed-on duties, Democrats can frame antitrust policy as instrumental to preventing state capture by vested interests and defending the liberty of consumers and small businesses.

In this respect, anti-monopolism unambiguously dovetails with Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. He and his heir apparent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have drawn impressive crowds in recent weeks, including in red states, reminding Democrats that fury with the economic and political system is pervasive but not something Trump has entirely co-opted. Undoubtedly, that has pushed more mild-mannered and “wonkish” Democrats like Reps. Auchincloss and Goodhart to sound populist notes and look for ways to salvage Biden’s antitrust legacy.

In another light, however, the anti-monopoly movement complements the emerging school of abundance—a notable twist given the evident the intellectual frictions between the two camps.

This is because America’s anti-monopoly tradition, though harnessing legitimate anger over economic exploitation and corruption, has often doubled as a form of developmentalism when put into actual policy. In essence, it aims to realize the key goals of the abundance crowd—to curb living costs and ensure markets and public policy actually produce socially-desirable goods efficiently—without hesitating to challenge business practices that hurt consumers, workers, and other firms.

Ambitious Democrats might therefore consider how the anti-monopoly framework could link different constituencies, party factions, and regional interests in pursuit of common goals. In the right hands—and with an emphasis on the general welfare—it could change the party’s fortunes with the working class. As each era since the Gilded Age has demonstrated, Americans tend to want leaders who fight vested interests, whether these are unabashed barons corrupting public offices and circumventing the law or faceless entities that siphon off hard-earned wages. But after two decades of falling life chances and regional stagnation, Americans also want to be confident that government action will decisively advance, not obstruct or delay, growth and opportunity.

Those Democrats who have caught the anti-monopoly bug must find a way to bridge those desires. At root, economic populism has always expressed working Americans’ unfading belief in a distinct kind of liberty—the right to provide and prosper, unencumbered by financial chicanery or deceptive contracts, and know in one’s bones that honest work is worth doing. If Democrats are serious about challenging concentrated power and privilege, they must make reinvigorating that liberty central to their mission.