While Vice President Kamala Harris has indicated that she plans to continue many of the Biden administration’s policies, one of the areas with the most uncertainty is how she would handle competition policy. In particular, Harris has not indicated if she would keep Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan or Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter in their current positions. Her silence on the issue has created significant angst among progressive Democrats, especially as some of Harris’s donors from the business community have called for her to replace these agency heads. Khan has received the most attention in this discussion, but Harris would likely replace or keep both rather than take some form of a middle ground.
President Biden’s presidency has been marked by aggressive antitrust enforcement, largely thanks to the work of Khan and Kanter spearheading this progressive effort. Now, corporate donors to the Harris campaign, such as Mark Cuban and Reid Hoffman, are hoping that a change in the presidency would bring a change in leadership at these antitrust agencies. To these executives, Khan and Kanter could damage future US growth, particularly in AI, by trying to break up today’s largest tech companies.
One of the hallmarks of Harris’s campaign has been her courtship of corporate leaders, many of whom feel that she has been someone willing to listen to their concerns and has, at times, adjusted policy proposals in their favor, as reported by The New York Times. Harris, stemming from her California and familial ties, also has connections to the business and tech community outside of the meetings she has held during her campaign. In addition, Harris, according to The Wall Street Journal, has held regular dinners with senior business leaders while serving as vice president.
The business community’s influence on the Harris campaign and her personal ties to industry leaders have been the primary driving force behind the progressive angst over whether Harris would replace Khan and Kanter. This anxiety is compounded by the increasingly likely prospects that Republicans will control the Senate, with 538 projecting them to win in 88% of their simulations. As such, if Harris were to replace Khan and Kanter, it is unlikely that she would be able to have as progressive of a nominee confirmed in a Republican Senate. Thus, replacing Khan and Kanter would likely not mean just changing the progressive leading these agencies, but likely instead putting a moderate in place.
Another complicating factor in this process for progressives is that Harris does not have the closest relationship with this wing of the Democratic Party. During the Biden administration, this group generally felt that the president was more accessible to them than Harris was. Most progressives are happy to support Harris’s campaign, given they view former President Donald Trump’s re-election as a much worse outcome. However, if Harris is elected, progressives have signaled that they would then look to increase the pressure on her to support some of the caucus’s wins under Biden.
Keeping Khan and Kanter will be one of these litmus tests for progressives. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), two leading progressives, have indicated in posts on X that they still support the regime led by Khan and Kanter and want to keep them in place. Harris has not made competition policy and antitrust enforcement a significant issue for her campaign. So, if it is not a top priority, having Khan and Kanter continue is an easy way to curry favor with the progressives. Additionally, it could be politically popular as a recent survey by Lake Research Partners found 67% of voters feel one of the country’s biggest problems is corporate power and a lack of government pushback, so maintaining an aggressive antitrust enforcement regime may also help position Harris for any potential re-election bid.