Trump Takeaway on Tech: Enforcement Over Regulation

Over just two days this week, the Trump administration has both sued AT&T to block its planned takeover of Time Warner and proposed allowing internet-service providers—like AT&T—to form closer alliances with content companies, like Time Warner. The two government moves seem to go in opposite directions, on the one hand restricting a major telecommunications merger and on the other giving internet providers broad new powers to shape their customers’ online experiences. But the actions reveal one consistency, and what might be viewed as an emerging Trump administration regulatory philosophy: Instead of new bright-line rules, such as those put in place under the Obama administration, it is stressing the enforcement of longstanding laws and regulations.

The moves are a shift in emphasis from the approach taken by the Obama administration, which in 2015 adopted highly specific rules governing internet providers in the name of “net neutrality,” the principle that all web traffic be treated equally. The providers were prevented from cutting deals, known as “paid prioritization,” that would give fast lanes to some kinds of content in return for a price. And the Obama administration carried that approach into the antitrust realm, insisting in Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal earlier this decade that Comcast live up to elaborate net-neutrality restrictions, as part of the so-called behavioral remedies that were conditions of antitrust approval.

In other words, net-neutrality regulation took the place of an antitrust challenge.