Reasonable conservatives can and do disagree about a number of topics, such as the best approach to tax policy, the right level of foreign aid, and whether the greatest president of the last century was Ronald Reagan or Calvin Coolidge (sorry, Teddy and Ike). In general, however, free-market conservatives believe in the rule of law and markets, rather than regulators, as the best path to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers and to cabin government within its proper, limited scope. Here at home, free-market conservatives also recognize that a vibrant and innovative American economy undergirds our prosperity and national security, particularly as a check on China’s authoritarian and expansionist regime.
On the other hand, a recent column in The Federalist by Aiden Buzzetti titled, “Why Free-Market Conservatives Should Cheer the Amazon Antitrust Suit,” encourages free-market conservatives to support the Biden administration’s antitrust agenda and, specifically, the Federal Trade Commission’s recent lawsuit against Amazon.
I have news for free-market conservatives: The Biden administration is not your friend. In sharp contrast to the arguments laid out in this column, the administration supports discredited leftist ideas that allow government regulators to dictate the structures of markets and to punish large and successful companies because they are large and successful.
In support of this “Neo-Brandeisian” philosophy, the FTC and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division are seeking to afford themselves virtually unlimited power to micromanage the economy, to disregard decades of judicial precedent dating back to Robert Bork, and to pick the
