House Judiciary Antitrust Chairman Cicilline wants to modernize antitrust

A Q&A with House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI). 

Chairman Cicilline said he has not “prejudged” the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger ahead of Feb 14’s House Judiciary hearing on the deal. But he expressed broad skepticism about reducing the number of wireless carriers in the market. “In general, when you have less companies in a space, the presumption in my own mind is less competition,” he said. He also weighed in on President Donald Trump’s comments that tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon may be in an “antitrust situation.” “I have seen no evidence that the president has thought about antitrust enforcement or about modernizing antitrust statutes or what the implications are of anticompetitive practices,” Cicilline said, adding that he’d be alarmed if President Trump inserted himself into federal agencies’ enforcement efforts. “Even a well-informed chief executive meddling in or interfering politically in this process would be very dangerous,” he said.

Chairman Cicilline said he expects future tech hearings to touch on everything from data privacy to modernizing antitrust statutes. And he anticipates tech company CEOs will partake in the discussions. “Obviously the big technology platforms are Google, Facebook, to a lesser extent Amazon. So those are some of the folks I think should be part of the discussion for sure,” he said.