Donald Trump sees himself as strong antitrust advocate for Justice Department unity

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Donald Trump is considering appointing an aggressive official to lead the Justice Department's antitrust team, as top Republicans set their sights on Big Tech's alleged anticompetitive behavior.

Gail Slater, a top aide to Vice President-elect JD Vance, is a leading candidate to head the antitrust unit at Trump's Justice Department, people familiar with the matter said. Earlier this month, she was seen as a trailblazer as head of the Federal Trade Commission.

Slaters' appointment would signify the new administration's support for a strong enforcement stance similar to that championed by Biden administration officials, including Jonathan Kanter, current head of the DoJ's antitrust division, and Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, top Wall Street dealmakers said.

Strong enforcement of antitrust laws, particularly on big tech, has been embraced by a new generation of Make America Great Again populists, led by Vance, who recently told the Financial Times that he wants to see Google broken up.

Slaters' emergence as a top contender for the DoJ's antitrust unit comes amid a battle to secure Trump's nomination to chair the FTC and shape how it aggressively polices mergers and acquisitions .

Leading contenders include Melissa Holyoak, according to people familiar with the matter. Holyoak, one of the agency's two Republican commissioners, could favor a more traditionally conservative antitrust policy that tolerates consolidation as long as consumers are not harmed, a paradigm rejected by Khan and Kanter.

But Sen. Mike Lee, a Trump ally and senior Republican on a U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, also threw his support behind Mark Meador, a former DoJ and FTC official. Wall Street and Big Tech executives fear he will continue the Biden administration's aggressive antitrust stance, which has resulted in high-profile legal challenges against Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon.

The FTC desperately needs new leadership that will return the agency to enforcement based on legal and economic precedent and continue to hold Big Tech accountable for its anticompetitive conduct, Lee told the Financial Times in a statement.

I am confident that Mark Meador and Melissa Holyoak will lead the agency in this direction, added Lee, who will chair the Upper House Energy Committee next year, a move that will raise his profile within the Republican Party.

Andrew Ferguson, the FTC's other Republican commissioner, is also in the running to lead the regulator. As a current official, he would not need to be approved again by the Senate.

But his previous role as a senior adviser to Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader whose relationship with President-elect Trump has deteriorated in recent years, could hurt his chances, a person familiar with the matter said.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump's transition, said the president-elect's remaining decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made.

Ferguson said in a statement that Trump's decisive victory is a mandate for change and that the Biden administration's regulatory assault on American businesses is over. He said he looks forward to being part of the most pro-innovation, pro-competition, pro-worker and pro-consumer administration in the history of this country.

Holyoak and Meador declined to comment. Slater did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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People familiar with the discussions said Slater remains in pole position to lead Trump's antitrust activities.

Given her position on the campaign and her relationship with JD Vance, I guess if she wants the DoJ [division] or FTC chairwoman, that she would be well-positioned to get it, one person said.

An Oxford-trained lawyer who worked at the FTC for a decade, Slater was an advisor to Julie Brill, a former FTC commissioner appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

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