Report from the Wall Street Journal
In Brief – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently met with President Trump in the White House and discussed settling the federal antitrust lawsuit that aims to break up the company by forcing Meta to spin out Instagram and WhatsApp. The bench trial is set to begin on April 14. The Federal Trade Commission’s complaint, originally filed during the final weeks of the first Trump Administration, alleges that Meta’s acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to illegally monopolize the “personal social media market” and the deals should be unwound. Back in 2021, Judge James Boasberg fully dismissed the original FTC effort. Refiled in 2021 by President Biden’s FTC Chair Lina Khan, the complaint then proceeded relentlessly. When Boasberg rejected most of Meta’s motion for summary judgement last fall, he struck a skeptical tone in his order, saying “time and technological change pose serious challenges” to the FTC’s market definition that rejects competition from TikTok. LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Context – Whether Meta will be broken up is another scene involving the mystery box of how “Big Tech” will be treated by the second Trump Administration. The embrace of the President in the final months of the campaign and at his inauguration were much noted. Meta has been among the most public, including changing content moderation policies and naming a Republican to lead global public policy. The President and Vice President have since criticized foreign tech regulation and taxes and threatened tariff retaliation. However, the Trump DoJ continues to call for breaking up Google by forcing a spin out of Chrome in that antitrust trial. There is a very aggressive anti-Big Tech wing within the Trump Administration, seemingly led by VP Vance and MAGA thought leader Steve Bannon. Big Tech hoped that tariff threats would help protect them from foreign penalties, taxes, and policies that the prior Administration often seemed to cheer. However, it is also pulling them more tightly into the Trade War fueled by new Trump tariffs, with the EU considering services tariffs and tech company retaliation.