Joshua D. Wright: The conservative case against weaponizing antitrust

America’s adoption of the consumer welfare standard since the late 1970s has led to the rise of innovative Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon. Other countries, particularly in Europe, would love to have massively successful tech firms of their own, but they’re constrained in part by their more restrictive antitrust doctrines. And yet, many conservatives have begun to sound like progressives on this topic, rejecting a more laissez-faire approach to antitrust out of concern that these tech companies have acquired too much power. So today’s episode explores the current state of US antitrust doctrine, as well as the resurgence of calls to reform it, with Joshua Wright.Josh is a law professor at George Mason University, as well as the executive director of the Global Antitrust Institute and a former member of the Federal Trade Commission. He is the co-author, along with Jan Rybnicek, of the recent National Affairs article, “A Time for Choosing: The Conservative Case Against Weaponizing Antitrust.”