Fmr. Google exec weighs in on giant's antitrust case under Trump
Alphabet's Google (GOOG, GOOGL) met with US President Donald Trump about the search engine giant's ongoing efforts to avoid a forced break up of its business on antitrust concerns. The meeting came after the Trump administration indicated plans to maintain Biden-era antitrust regulation. Chamber of Progress CEO and founder Adam Kovacevich, who previously led Google's US policy strategy and external affairs team, joins Catalysts Co-Hosts Seana Smith and Madison Mills to examine the factors at play for Trump-era antitrust regulators and the Google case. "It depends on which branch of the Trump world kind of prevails in this case," Kovacevich says, explaining that "This is a case that was brought under the Justice Department under Trump's first term [and then] the Biden Justice Department then prosecuted the case and won the case." "Now it's in the remedy stage. So, the question is, what remedies will the judge impose?" he says, noting that "The Biden Justice Department proposed what I would call like remedy spaghetti against the wall" with "nearly 30 different [proposed] remedies," he says." "The other thing that's a big tension here is you've got the Trump administration coming in and saying, 'Look, we are in an existential fight against China on things like AI competition ... What are we going to do, hobble one of our main US runners in that race by breaking up that company?' It seems ill-timed to do that," Kovacevich adds. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Catalysts here. This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.
