WASHINGTON—As President Donald Trump prepares to deliver his State of the Union tonight, NetChoice published a new report with Ginn Economic Consulting. In Innovation Over Intervention: Restoring First Principles To American Antitrust, Dr. Vance Ginn warns that maintaining America’s global economic and technological lead requires a return to first principles: free markets, free speech and the consumer welfare standard in antitrust policy.
“Antitrust should protect competition, not manage markets. Innovation thrives when firms can invest, experiment and scale under predictable rules. The U.S. does not need industrial policy or politicized antitrust to compete. It needs to restore first principles and let markets work,” said Ginn, NetChoice Senior Fellow, Ginn Economic Consulting President and former White House Office of Management and Budget Chief Economist.
President Trump’s AI Action Plan correctly frames American tech leadership as a strategic imperative that directly impacts long-run economic growth, defense readiness and national security, and Ginn highlights how the framework’s key directives unleash U.S. free markets and investment. He outlines a blueprint for American policymakers to further power the President’s Golden Age agenda.
The report urges American policymakers to reject populist imitations of Europe’s failed precautionary model, which has created a “Tech Museum” of regulation across the continent, stifling innovation. Abandoning evidence-based antitrust at home has weakened U.S. firms like iRobot and advantaged competitors like China, which exploits American regulatory friction to alter comparative advantages.
The Policy Blueprint: Deregulate at Home, Defend Abroad, and Win the Tech Race
- Restore the Consumer Welfare Standard: Regulators should evaluate business conduct based on measurable outcomes like prices and quality, not firm size, and set clear, predictable standards.
- Fix Infrastructure and Permitting as Competition Policy: Fix permitting and energy bottlenecks to allow the next generation of American technological innovation to flourish, like artificial intelligence (AI).
- Defend American Businesses From Discriminatory Foreign Regulations: Challenge discriminatory foreign regulations, like the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act from Europe, that target American firms.
“President Trump has repeatedly and aggressively taken the Europeans to task over discriminatory ‘competition’ policies targeting America’s crown jewel technology companies. Our leading tech companies have generated immense prosperity and power for the American people and our culture while Europe is devoid of equivalent firms. Yet camps in both of America’s political parties seek to adopt the European approach to innovation and competition policy. Dr. Ginn’s report lays out why this would be a catastrophic mistake and undercut Trump’s America First agenda,” said Patrick Hedger, NetChoice Director of Policy.
Read Innovation Over Intervention: Restoring First Principles To American Antitrust HERE.
Find a one-pager on the report’s key takeaways HERE.
Please contact press@netchoice.org with inquiries.
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