Jonathan Kanter
Appearances
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
So we're in a wait-and-see mode, but I will say I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to see continuity. Ultimately, personnel is policy and the two people that... President Trump nominated for the Department of Justice, my old job, and the chair of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, are both enforcement-minded. And so what they do will be different from how we enforce the law.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
But what antitrust does is it touches on this sort of weird area in Washington of policy overlap, where there is more of a realignment around policy antitrust and economic populism and controlling corporate power for the benefit of workers, for the benefit of consumers, for the benefit of entrepreneurs.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And I think we're likely to see that continue at least to some degree in this current administration.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Let me just, if you don't mind me picking at that a little bit, I think I am not super pro-regulation. So my belief is that I believe I'm a capitalist. I believe in markets. I believe that ultimately free markets and competitive markets can yield better outcomes for society and that are a much better alternative to invasive regulation.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And so sometimes regulation and rules are necessary, but I would much rather have markets sorted out through competition in the first instance. That's ultimately the theory that I had in animating our approach to antitrust enforcement. And I think it actually reflects the theory that animates the approach to antitrust enforcement in the current administration, but we'll have to wait and see.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
The alternative to that is a neoliberal view, one that really dominated in the era of Reagan and George W. Bush, The Clinton administration to some degree part of the Obama administration, which is ultimately that mergers are efficient, monopolies are efficient, and ultimately we should just regulate the big companies rather than stopping them from getting big or maintaining their bigness.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And I think that view is pretty much out of fashion right now in Washington.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Taking them at their own word, I think those priorities are big tech, workers, and what remains to be seen, but I think what should be among the highest priorities is health care. Interesting.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
The healthcare markets today remind me a lot of big tech in 2016 or 2017, where we've seen this sort of gradual, if not alarming, march toward concentration and convergence around a handful of conglomerate platforms that have outsized control in the healthcare system.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And there is now a greater appreciation that those integrated companies are essentially emerging as platforms unto themselves and control our healthcare system. And so whether you're a doctor or a nurse, a pharmacist, another insurance company, you kind of have to plug into those healthcare platforms.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And they're exerting a massive amount of control, and it constitutes a massive spend for our economy. And so I think the... The degree of concern, the degree of concentration, the degree of control and the impact on our economy are all the ingredients that usually point to greater antitrust enforcement and greater interest by business in seeing antitrust enforcement.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
One of the things I noticed when I was at the government was that there are lots of businesses who want to invest in fixing our healthcare system. They want to invest in improving the ability to get access to pharmaceuticals for less money. The insurance system is completely bloated and bureaucratic, not at the government level, but at the private sector level.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And there's a great interest of business to disrupt that, to compete, but they can't break in, in part due to the moats that surround these large healthcare platforms.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
But so you have to, when you take a job like the one I took, you have to decide you don't give a shit. And ultimately, I'm a lawyer and I have clients and I viewed my client as the public. And I was going to, you know, jump in front of a train if I had to in order to protect my client, which was the public. That's my philosophy toward representing companies in the legal area.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And so that's what we did. And so we if companies came in and made sensible arguments and presented facts, we would listen. But the idea of playing politics, going to the media, going after us personally, going to Congress and trying to interfere with legitimate antitrust enforcement, we tune that out. But I would say that there's a real risk.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
that that kind of lobbying and PR campaigns and public affair campaigns can take hold. And it's really dangerous when it does. Companies pour a ton of money into this. I'll also say that, you know, the bigger they get, the more weight they can throw on Washington.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And one of the things that I think people inside Washington understand, sometimes it's not appreciated outside, is that it's really hard to do something. It's really easy to get people to do nothing. And so most of the money that gets invested is not into solving the problem and fixing the problem.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Most of the lobbying money goes into throwing sand in the gears against any effort to actually make things better. And so you have to have a tremendous amount of will. You have to have a tremendous amount of courage and perseverance in order to actually make a difference. That's something that we did, but it's really freaking hard.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
So there are a number of different dimensions that go into this. First, there's kind of the straight traditional lobbying, which is I'm going to pour a ton of money into a campaign, right? And people who are running for office, especially if it's every two years, need a constant influx of cash. Right.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And so they're trying to figure out how do they come up with a policy agenda that allows them to stay in office. And it's very easy to rationalize that. Well, if I compromise and get enough donors, then I can stay in office and do other good things. Right. But that can easily tilt into a very dangerous place. That's one. But it's more than just that.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Most of the money that gets reported as lobbying is really just for that going up to Capitol Hill and meeting with a senator or congressman. That's not where most of the money goes, though. Most of the money goes into PR campaigns. It goes into funding university professors who write favorable articles that then they incite to in their PR campaigns.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
It's planning stories and getting people to talk on podcasts and podcasts. And this insidious layer of operatives who you don't realize are speaking on behalf of big business but are there to seed ideas and promote their clients' interests, often not disclosing who they work for, who paid for their stuff. I can't tell you how many times I heard the same arguments from these grassroots groups
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
public advocacy organizations that are just front groups for the same handful of big companies. They're everywhere. They're pouring a ton of money into it, and it far outstrips the amount that they're disclosing in their lobbying forms.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
It would be devastating. Let me just give you a little bit of context, right? So when I ran the antitrust division at the Department of Justice, we were in charge of antitrust enforcement. We were about 800 people. That's about 250 fewer people than we had in 1979. We were smaller than 1979. But I will also tell you this in terms of efficiency.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
We ran at zero cost to taxpayers, and each year during my tenure, we had a budget surplus. And we relied on fees, merger fees, to fund the entire antitrust division, even though that's not what we did. So taxpayers got a great deal, and during that time, We brought cases against Google.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
We brought cases against Apple, Ticketmaster, American Airlines, Visa, United Healthcare, RealPage and the big landlords, the big meatpackers we touched through a case involving a company called Agristats. We brought some of the most effective, significant antitrust cases.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
We did it at zero cost to the taxpayers, and we did it at a budget surplus while at the same time investing in things like AI and other tools to make ourselves more efficient. If there's a real interest in making government more efficient, then there's a real conversation to have. But I don't believe that's what's happening.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
I think what's happening right now is attempt to dismantle our government infrastructure because they don't want it there.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
I think they can all benefit from being more efficient. So I think the amount of process and sometimes norms that have good intentions often create debilitating bureaucracy. And so I will tell you, sure, right? And in fact, I was an agent of change
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And I came in, and despite those headwinds, we were able to move things forward, change policies, change the composition of our workforce, hire more experts, invest in more technology. There are plenty of things you can do to make it more efficient. I will say this, though. If you wanted to address efficiency in government spending,
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Employees, federal employees are the last place you'd probably start. They're a sliver of the federal budget. Just from an employment perspective, I think four-fifths of government employees reside outside the D.C. area. One-third are veterans. And that's before you factor in all the money that goes into...
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
funding employers like state universities and hospitals, particularly in the Midwest and the South, that are themselves the largest employers in their states. The federal government is the largest employer in the U.S. So one, firing people wholesale indiscriminately without regard for whether they are talented or whether they are
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
lower wage than someone who's been there a long time is not the way to improve efficiency and lower cost. You want at a lower cost, the place you'd start would be government contractors. Massive amounts of money, fraud, waste, and abuse is often in private companies government contractors who are overcharging the government. You talk about Medicare, for example.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
It is antithetical to our system to say that we need a small number of really big players in order to compete against China. The way to compete against China is not to be more like China. We are at our best when we have a free, open, fair market economy that allows a thousand flowers to bloom and to innovate.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And if anything, we become too dependent on a small number of players, many of whom are not—I mean, these are great companies, but they're global companies. They're not the U.S. government. Many of them have huge alliances with China and care deeply about China, both for manufacturing and for growth.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And so we are at our best when we are promoting the development and growth of more companies, when we are forcing more innovation. I would much rather see a world where we have numerous chip suppliers, where we have more onshore manufacturing capability, where we have big players and small players and everybody in between innovating on top of the various different models and structures.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Yes, some of this is very capital-intensive, and some of these markets are going to result in a handful of small, big players. Hopefully not. But now our question is, are we going to let those big players now vertically integrate and conglomerate so they can take over every market that relies on that platform? These are the kinds of lessons we learned from the Internet age.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
We did nothing for 15 years with respect to big tech. And I think we got to a place where everyone in Washington, or at least most people in Washington, realized that antitrust enforcement was too lax. And rather than having invasive regulation and rules, we're better off creating a market where we can have a significant amount of competition and entry. And I think that is far more important.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
The other thing I will say is... In terms of regulation, I sometimes, you know, roll my eyes at this because here we are in 2025 and we still don't have any basic privacy regulations. Zero. Think about all the data that these companies collect. There's not a single regulation
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
comprehensive um privacy bill that's ever made it out of congress right these this is this is the most unregulated industry relative to its size and its significance that the country has ever seen so this idea that um there's been too much regulation is not something i quite understand um that being said i think the you know i so i push back against this concept that we need a small number of really big players and then we regulate them through government control that to me
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Sounds like a planned economy. It sounds more like China. I would much rather have a free and open market that keeps these big firms from dominating, allow smaller and medium-sized player to get the scale they need in order to compete effectively.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Number one on my list is healthcare. Okay. Another area is defense. We had massive consolidation starting in the 90s among our prime contractors. And the government spends a lot of money without enough competition. And too many contracts are sole source or, if you're lucky, dual source. And there needs to be more competition. more supply, more prime contractors.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
I think there's a lot we can do to help save money there. Another is agriculture. Talk to farmers. They are the lifeblood of our of our economy and our society and our rural communities, they're being squeezed, whether it's seeds, meat packers, tractors. I mean, it's unbelievable. A farmer can't fix their own tractor.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
He or she has to go to a specialized retailer, buy expensive parts that might be hours away, They can't fix their own stuff in order to operate on their own farms because of right-to-repair restrictions. These kinds of things are debilitating for farmers around the country. And if you go to rural communities, they will tell you that they are being squeezed and they need more help.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Not always the Republican side. That's the part I would just—so this issue creates strange bedfellows, right? And so figuring out who's in favor and who's opposed is not as simple as looking at red or blue.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
These issues transcend politics, and I think they go to different philosophies on do we want a controlled economy with a small number of players and more regulation, or we do want a decentralized economy with lots of players and perhaps lighter regulation only when necessary in order to promote safety and security.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
So this is actually really the kind of, you know, interesting little bit from my experience. For every case we brought, for every monopoly we went against, whether it's There probably were 20 or 30 companies that were asking us to bring the case. Not because they wanted a handout. They weren't gonna make any money from our litigation. They just wanted the opportunity to compete.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
So the dirty little secret is that business actually likes what we do. They are the ones encouraging us to bring cases because they want access to markets. They want supply chains that are affordable. They want greater supply of key inputs, right? This is something that's quite popular in business. The monopolies, though, hate it, right?
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Because the one or two companies in each market that control it don't like it when they're sued. I will say this. They might not like it, but it's better than massive industry-wide regulation. It's more surgical. It's more of a scalpel. Two is they invest tremendous amount of money to throw sand in the gears.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
They'll go after you personally, and they'll send people to your house, and they'll get op-eds written in the newspaper, and they'll go pay university professors to say that you're destroying innovation and this, that, and the other thing. You just have to brush that off.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
But most of the cases that we brought, the only people defending the monopolists were the monopolists or people paid by the monopolists.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Yeah, it concerns me. I mean, I've seen this movie before and it doesn't end well, right? Like, you know, the role of Google in the Obama administration was well documented in terms of their role not just in getting the campaign and the data, but in terms of the infiltration in government. Right.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
We tried to squeeze that out and we tried to say we're going to put people and people like me and others who don't care and who are going to focus on representing the public first, not the big companies and the donors. And I worry that if we go right back to that situation, it's going to be a problem. The other is you can't. Dismiss self-dealing, right?
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And so when companies are advising a government and have something to gain from it, it creates distrust in government. I'll also say, like, you know, and this to me was a concern is, you know, think about the inauguration, right? The night of—the day of the inauguration. It was held indoors because— supposedly it was too cold to be outside.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
So in the capital rotunda, you know, nice and warm and cozy, you had the CEOs of Google and Apple and Amazon and Meta and others, while the, you know, the rank and file grassroots supporters were outside freezing their tuchuses off, right? So like, to me, that's a metaphor for the situation.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
And I think if the public wants government to work for it and not just big companies, then it needs to say so.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Have a North Star. So I kept a compass on my desk because it was a reminder that every day, ultimately, my North Star was making sure we had a competitive economy that worked for the broader public.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
I think developing your North Star early on in your career, understanding what values you hold dear, and then working through public service or organizations around public service in order to further those values, in order to make people's lives better. That's what my advice is. It's really easy in Washington. It's really easy in this public policy conversation to get caught up in that.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
in attention and caught up in ideas and catchphrases. Have a North Star. Start by helping people. Figure out what you believe in and then work backwards from that.
Prof G Markets
The Next Era Of Antitrust — ft. DOJ’s Jonathan Kanter
Well, it's good to look under the hood every once in a while and let's go Mets.