Cory Doctorow used his Pluralistic newsletter on July 7 to argue that state attorneys general and foreign competition agencies should coordinate antitrust cases against Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, especially if federal enforcement under President Donald Trump is no longer a reliable partner.
The mechanism is straightforward, and more interesting than the usual hand-waving about “global cooperation.” Doctorow argues that modern platform companies tend to use the same market-control tactics across countries. If regulators in Brussels, Seoul or London develop evidence about a company’s conduct, that evidence may be useful in California, New York or Japan because the business model does not reset at the border.
Doctorow contrasts that with Standard Oil, whose bottlenecks differed by country. In his telling, John D. Rockefeller’s company controlled pipelines and refineries in the United States, while using different pressure points elsewhere, such as ports in Germany. Today’s tech giants, he says, are more standardized machines, which makes cross-border case-building easier.
He also points to the legal architecture. Doctorow says the Marshall Plan helped spread US-style antitrust concepts after World War II and the Korean War, putting Sherman Act and Clayton Act-like rules into many countries’ law books. That matters because similar laws applied to similar conduct make regulator-to-regulator cooperation less theatrical and more operational.
During the Biden administration, Doctorow says US antitrust officials including Lina Khan at the FTC, Rohit Chopra at the CFPB and Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department worked alongside counterparts from the UK, Europe, Singapore, South Korea and Japan. He cites UK Competition and Markets Authority conferences in London as part of that coordination.
Doctorow’s argument is that the Trump administration has changed the enforcement math. He says foreign regulators previously benefited from knowing the US government might help enforce judgments against US-based tech companies. Without that backing, orders from Europe, Canada or the UK are easier for American firms to resist.
He lists several examples of what he sees as a retreat in competition and tech regulation: Canada cutting Competition Bureau funding under Mark Carney after Justin Trudeau created new powers for the agency, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer replacing the head of the CMA with the CEO of Amazon UK, and Ireland appointing former Meta lobbyist Niamh Sweeney to a privacy enforcement role involving US tech firms.
On Ireland, Doctorow cites an Irish Independent interview in which Sweeney said she was not under the same legal gag as Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams and held no tech shares. Doctorow argues the statement still does not clearly say whether Sweeney has any contractual limits affecting what she can say about Meta.
The US-state piece comes from Tyler Clark, writing in The Sling. Clark calls for “regionalized enforcement” against dominant tech firms, including coalitions of state enforcers and, potentially, regional FTC enforcement centers created by a future federal statute.
Doctorow extends that proposal. State attorneys general can enforce federal antitrust laws, he notes, and state governments sit inside the US judicial system in a way foreign regulators do not. His proposal is for state AGs to work directly with foreign agencies: shared evidence, aligned theories of harm and, where possible, US-based enforcement of penalties or breakup orders.
He suggests one starting point: joint hearings that call former employees of large tech companies as witnesses. Doctorow says those workers may know where internal documents are kept, including records that could help prove intent, often the hardest part of an antitrust case. That is the least glamorous version of trustbusting, which is usually the useful one.
This story draws on original reporting from Pluralistic.
