The New Antitrust Era

Whenever concentrated corporate power has been allowed to grow unchecked, the result has been economic distortion, less competition, and public backlash. From the railroad and oil monopolies of the Gilded Age to the AI-driven tech giants dominating today’s digital economy, the American experience shows that robust antitrust action has been essential to preserving fair competition and safeguarding common good.

This study guide arms budding policymakers with the context and arguments needed to confront those who dismiss the importance of vigorous antitrust enforcement in America.

What You’ll Learn

The following Study Guide begins with first principles before diving deeper into case studies and policy debriefs. By the end of this Study Guide, you’ll be able to answer the following:

The history of American antitrust laws
The basic arguments for, and against, antitrust
Where antitrust law might go from here

This Study Guide was created in partnership with The Bull Moose Project.

Part I: Beginnings of American Antitrust

Before Industrialization

Before the United States industrialized, there were no particularly large companies as we understand them today. Monopolies at times rose, but the scale – and power – of these institutions were often restricted on a regional basis.

The industrial revolution, however, changed all this. The advent of national railroad, oil, and other industrial companies – and the “robber barons” who ran them – led to a rise in prices for consumers and the creation of monopolies. This elicited a panic among the population and their elected representatives.

As you read, consider the following study questions:

Why did the entire American political spectrum turn against the consolidation of larger companies in the late 1800s?
Why did the federal government slow down its usage of antitrust laws in the mid- to late-20th century?
What antitrust litigation is being pursued today?

Case Study: The Sherman Antitrust Act

Overview The Sherman Antitrust Act is the foundation upon which the entirety of American antitrust laws are built. The bill – a lean three pages – empowers the federal government to investigate and punish anticompetitive conduct.

Summary The period in which the bill was passed, 1890, was contentious: Congress was closely divided, and President Benjamin Harrison had won in 1888 without winning the popular vote. Nevertheless, concern over antitrust was so great, the bill passed unanimously in the House and with all but one vote in the Senate. The single vote in Congress against the bill was cast by Senator Rufus Blodgett of New Jersey – who was also working as a railroad executive while serving in Congress.

Why Read You cannot understand modern antitrust debates without understanding the law it is still based around today.

Key Quote: “Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony…”

Presidents immediately began using the new powers granted to them by the Sherman Antitrust Act, beginning with Grover Cleveland. But it was William McKinley and, most famously, Theodore Roosevelt, who served as president from 1901 to 1909, who first truly utilized the Sherman Antitrust Act. Roosevelt engaged in what became known as “trust-busting,” the practice of breaking up conglomerates (trusts) which the federal government believed had grown monopolistic. Read it here.

An Excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s First Annual Message to Congress

Summary Theodore Roosevelt took office under tragic circumstances: the assassination of his predecessor by an anarchist. But while Roosevelt began his first message to Congress (it would not be called the State of the Union for some time) lambasting anarchy, he quickly pivoted to arguing for the need to contain monopolies. It would be a repeated theme of his presidency.

Why Read Roosevelt directly addresses his thoughts – and the thoughts of a majority of Americans at the time – on trust-busting. He makes clear that he is not seeking to start a class war (and explicitly denounces such terminology.

Key Quote: “There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare.” Read the full excerpt here.

Read his address here. President Roosevelt went on to invoke the Sherman Antitrust Act dozens of times. One of his administration’s most notable successes was a victory at the Supreme Court in 1904 which resulted in the forced breakup of the Northern Securities Company, an illegal monopoly of America’s central and western railroads.

Underappreciated for his trustbusting efforts, however, was Roosevelt’s successor, Howard Taft. Taft brought more antitrust suits than Roosevelt had and continued many of the major lawsuits initiated by the Roosevelt administration, including one against the Standard Oil Company.

BOOK: The History of the Standard Oil Company , by Ida M. Tarbell

Summary Tarbell released the book as a serialized journalistic investigation into monopolistic practices by the Standard Oil Company, which controlled nearly 90 percent of the domestic American oil market. The public and elected officials were outraged.

Why Read In the twenty-first century, serious monopolies of major industry are hard to fathom – much less control of an entire industry by a single company. Tarbell’s book goes into detail on the Standard Oil Company’s practices, underlining why the entire public sphere was so revulsed.

Read the book here. The following years saw a series of additions made to antitrust law, though paradoxically, also restrictions. The largest restriction came from the breakup of the Standard Oil Company itself. While the Supreme Court ruled that the company was acting as an illegal monopoly – breaking it into nearly three dozen pieces – they also ruled that only restrictions of commerce which are unreasonable, a highly subjective definition, were unlawful. This “rule of reason” still governs antitrust law today.

Part II: Antitrust Law in the 20th Century

While antitrust laws did not fall out of fashion, the Sherman Antitrust Act was utilized significantly less as time went on. This was partially due to the act’s success in breaking up the larger monopolies, but also due to conflicting definitions of what “unreasonable” meant in practice.

Why the Mid-20th Century Was Not the Golden Age of Antirust, by Brian Cheffins

Summary While some have tried to portray the mid-20th century as a paragon of antitrust law, Cheffins – a professor of corporate law at Cambridge – argues that it was anything but.

Why Read Antitrust law is commonly portrayed as having been weakened in the Reagan era. Not only is this untrue – the Reagan administration broke up Bell, which monopolized American telephone lines – understanding why it actually decreased in use is key to tackling the issues it faces today.

Key Quote “There was a general perception, however, that antitrust enforcement otherwise lagged during the 1960s, with a reluctance on the part of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to antagonize big business seen as playing a role.”

As the Reagan era began, it did, as mentioned above, feature antitrust successes. But with the shift toward free-marketeering came critiques and open opposition to antitrust law from major figures.

The Antitrust Paradox, by Robert Bork

Summary In this book, Bork – a highly influential conservative legal scholar – writes that antitrust law had, by the late 1970s (when the book was written) become unmoored from its original intention: protecting vigorous competition between businesses, not protecting smaller, inefficient businesses from larger, more efficient ones.

Why Read Bork’s book was extremely influential, and has been cited repeatedly by courts, elected officials, and bureaucrats.

But individuals making policy were also turning on antitrust enforcement itself. Alan Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve for almost two decades, critiqued antitrust law throughout his life. While serving as Federal Reserve Chairman, he urged the Clinton administration to have “a higher degree of humility” when dealing with suspected monopolies.

Antitrust, by Alan Greenspan

Summary Greenspan wrote this essay in the early 1960s for Ayn Rand’s newsletter. In it, Greenspan provides a (very negative) reading of American antitrust laws and argues America’s antitrust law should be fundamentally restructured and greatly reduced in scope.

Why Read Greenspan was hugely influential, both in policymaking and in the field of economics. His comments reflect the free-marketeer views of anti-antitrust campaigners in the mid- to late-20th century.

Key Quote: “In view of the confusion, contradictions, and legalistic hairsplitting which characterize the realm of antitrust, I submit that the entire antitrust system must be opened for review.”

Part III: Antitrust Law Today

Recent presidents of both parties have supported antitrust actions; the Trump administrations, notably, have begun several lawsuits targeting Google and other major companies they have deemed monopolistic.

Google remedies signal the beginning of ‘America First’ antitrust, by Aiden Buzzetti

Summary Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project, portrays Mehta’s 2025 ruling as the beginning, not the end, of Republican antitrust efforts. He highlights the details of Mehta’s ruling.

Why Read Progress on antitrust legislation has historically been slow. Even when legislation was enacted – such as the Sherman Antitrust Law – it still took decades to break up the biggest offenders.

Key Quote: “For too long, antitrust law has been caricatured as a dead letter. This ruling proves such caricatures wrong.”

Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google

Summary The Department of Justice’s antitrust division, led by Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, won a summary judgement against Google. But though Judge Amit Mehta had previously ruled Google was an illegal monopoly, he stopped far short of demanding a breakup of the company.

Why Read This is antitrust law in-action. If it is ultimately successful, the breakup of Google could easily act as this generation’s breakup of Standard Oil. Read it here.

The Antitrust Cases That Matter, by Joel Thayer

Summary Thayer, the president of the Digital Progress Institute, discusses the current major antitrust cases being pursued by the Trump administration.

Why Read President Trump has fashioned himself after Roosevelt in many ways, including antitrust law. And with the New Right increasingly becoming comfortable with using government power – and moving further and further away from individuals like Greenspan – it is likely that antitrust law will continue to play a major role going forward. Understanding the ongoing cases, which will likely take years to resolve, is key to understanding antitrust law today.

A special thanks to the team at The Bull Moose Project — including Anthony Constantini and Aiden Buzzetti —for their work and dedication in producing this Study Guide. Follow their work here.