In January 2017, the Yale Law Journal published a paper entitled ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox’, by a little-known young journalist and scholar called Lina Khan. Softly and clearly, Khan delivered a wrecking ball to the cosy and corrupt global consensus on corporate power that has prevailed since the 1970s. It’s this consensus that has allowed the emergence of monopolising giants, such as Amazon, Google, Citigroup and Walmart, in nearly every economic sector you can think of.
Some academics, lawyers and lobbyists – many funded by tech giants – snickered at her radical ideas. Yet just four years later, at the age of 32, Khan would be appointed to be chair of one of the world’s most powerful economic regulators, the US Federal Trade Commission.
Her appointment in June was no isolated act on the part of Joe Biden’s administration. In recent months, a number of others with similar ideals have been appointed to powerful positions, notably lawyer Jonathan Kanter to head the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, and legal scholar and writer Tim Wu as a special adviser to Biden at the National Economic Council. Crucially, their nominations gained some Republican support.
