Over just a few months, the Trump Administration has unleashed an unexpected array of tools to redress the perceived “burden” carried by the US for security and overvaluation of the dollar, wake up the rest of the world (especially Europe) to the need to “burden share” and push back on China’s march to economic hyperpower.
From tariffs, to control of the Federal Reserve, to support for crypto, to the return of national champions, to taming the traditional media, to dangling a sword of Damocles on Big Tech, and dealmaking on a vast scale – there is a thread connecting all this as America is asserting power at home and abroad. Europe needs to connect the dots, rewriting the rulebook entirely for a hard power world.
Rohit Chopra, former Director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and FTC Commissioner, joins Cristina Caffarra to discuss how finance, industrial policy and global power are being redefined and what that means for Europe.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁” in the US?
What did it mean and has it evaporated? The “𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁” brand of antitrust populism ("everyday pocket issues for ordinary Americans") was the flag for the new leadership at DOJ and FTC, but has it met reality? Wall Street, corporate lobbyists, Big Tech affirmation and more. Antitrust seems wielded as a tool to fight elite culture wars rather than “pocket issues”. And the courts? With Google Search we had a strong liability finding which smashed against the limits of what an individual judge “feels” he can really do to fix vast monopolies. So is antitrust enforcement against digital monopolies futile? We failed in Europe, but what signal does a weak remedy give to global regulators on that path?
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗨𝗦 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴?
A frank conversation with Roger Alford, friend and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the DOJ Antitrust Division, who was fired by DOJ leadership for having dissented with the HP / Juniper a merger settlement, but remains a loyal Republican and supporter of AAG Gail Slater’s agenda.
In this NEW PODCAST Cristina Caffarra practices escaping forward from (just) antitrust, because everything connects. This episode brings together an American Conservative view of Europe and what “America First” means behind the current tariff war (Oren Cass) and a European diagnosis of the problem and what we should do (Sander Tordoir). Brutal and clear. We are not just fighting a trade war.
Antitrust has thrived in the shadows for decades as a powerful technocracy, a church with its own rituals, a lobbyfest pretending to be science. But it is an economic policy tool working alongside other tools. After a lifetime as antitrust expert economist, and one of the original proponents of the “more economic approach” in Europe, Cristina Caffarra discusses with friends in policy and academe why we need to escape the myth competition will deliver “a level playing field, consumer choice and therefore innovation”, and move forward to connecting the dots with everything else that matters to growth and prosperity.
