Congressional Hearings Provide Megaphone for Big Tech Attacks on Global Anti-Monopoly Laws
The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to stop countries from regulating U.S. Big Tech companies. The administration has linked the application of its “reciprocal tariffs” to supposed digital trade-related barriers imposed by several countries and has aggressively pushed for Big Tech-friendly provisions in many of its recent trade agreements.
In the same vein, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee has launched sustained attacks against other countries’ efforts to regulate the digital ecosystem. Following a committee hearing in September 2025 that targeted European online safety-related laws, echoing disingenuous Big Tech arguments about “free speech” and “innovation,” last week, the Antitrust subcommittee held a hearing to supposedly examine how various countries, such as South Korea, are discriminating against Big Tech companies by implementing digital ecosystem-related antitrust laws.
At their core, the arguments made by Big Tech and their allies in Congress in these hearings are based on a willful obfuscation of both competition and trade law.
South Korea’s proposed digital competition regulations provide an important illustration.
Over the past few years, South Korea has proposed several laws to promote competition and innovation in the digital economy, including in the form of ex ante rules, like those adopted by the European Union. However, these proposals were dropped in the face of U.S. opposition, which broadly claimed that ex ante rules, i.e., requirements that must be met before market introduction, were too restrictive and impeded innovation. Korea then proposed amendments to its sector-agnostic anti-monopoly laws to impose an ex post facto legal framework to hold dominant digital platforms accountable for engaging in practices such as self-preferencing and tying, which can be detrimental to both smaller businesses as well as consumers. Still unsatisfied, Big Tech’s attacks on these proposals continue.
These policies, contrary to industry claims, are neutral in their application and do not exclusively target U.S.-based companies. South Korea’s anti-monopoly framework is grounded in long-standing, sector-neutral principles focused on market power, abuse of dominance, and consumer welfare. The Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has also consistently applied these principles to both Korean and foreign enterprises. It has taken regulatory action under the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act against large South Korean digital businesses such as Naver, Kakao, and Coupang for various anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices.
The fact that several of the largest online platforms operating in South Korea that might be affected by these laws happen to be American reflects global market concentration, not regulatory bias. As in several other jurisdictions, including in the U.S., the KFTC’s interest in countering digital gatekeeper behavior arises from structural concerns about data control, self-preferencing, lock-in, and the effects of vertical integration — not the nationality of the firms involved.
Proposals for new digital competition laws in South Korea and other parts of the world mirror domestic U.S. debates about how to update antitrust tools for markets in which network effects and data advantages entrench incumbents. Framing these initiatives as “anti-U.S.” obscures their policy rationale and dismisses the sovereign right and responsibility of governments to regulate companies operating within their borders — regardless of origin — that wield structural power over key sectors of the economy.
Using trade policy to attack foreign countries’ digital competition initiatives is both highly inappropriate and self-defeating. Competition policy is a core element of domestic economic governance, and countries must retain the policy space to address concentrated market power in ways suited to their own institutional and market realities.
Trade agreements should be designed to guard against discriminatory treatment, not to shield large multinational firms from legitimate regulatory scrutiny, nor to pre-emptively prohibit entire categories of competition rules. Pressuring foreign countries through trade talks sets a precedent that trade policy can be deployed to undermine democratically enacted competition laws. This undermines the credibility of the U.S. as a proponent of fair and rules-based governance and may even set back domestic U.S. efforts at promoting competition in the digital ecosystem.
Instead of using opaque trade deals or executive power to carry the water of Big Tech to undermine other countries’ anti-trust policies, U.S. policymakers should redouble efforts at home to challenge anti-competitive behavior in the digital economy.