Tim Wu May Soon Join White House National Economic Council: Report

The Columbia University professor and antitrust crusader who coined the term “net neutrality,” Tim Wu, is likely to join the White House National Economic Council, according to Politico.

Tim Wu is the author of “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age,” and a hero to progressives who want President Biden to take a more aggressive approach to Big Tech.

Wu previously served on the NEC at the end of the Obama administration, and has been discussed as a potential Biden pick to fill one of two vacancies on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and perhaps also be elevated to FTC chair.

“Tim Wu, a major advocate for the antitrust suits filed by the FTC and state attorneys general against Facebook, is one of the founders of the New Brandeis school of thought, named for former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Neo-Brandeisians believe the antitrust laws should focus not simply on consumers but on challenging corporate power itself to prevent any company from exerting too much economic or political control — making the tech giants, particularly Amazon, Google and Facebook, among their biggest targets. They also view antitrust as just one of several ways the government can fight monopoly power.

“As a veteran of the FTC, the New York attorney general’s office and the Obama White House, Wu was seen as a top pick for chair of the FTC, where he could help put some of that new antitrust manifesto into action. Installing him at the White House could breathe new life into the proposal to create a new Office of Competition Policy. The office, championed by Wu and prominent Obama-era antitrust vets, would be in charge of promoting competition across the federal government, urging federal agencies to institute new rules, or repeal old ones, and coordinate between agencies to help markets function better” commented Politico’s Leah Nylen.