Photo | Gage Skidmore
Incoming presidential administrations tend to enter the White House treading modestly, and understandably so.
After contentious election races, administrations often staffed by inexperienced personnel from outside of Washington, D.C., seek to find their legs and integrate peacefully in order to establish comity that they hope can prove fruitful down the road. Oftentimes, those hopes prove naïve.
Starting January 20, 2025, President Trump must take a different and more impatient course.
That’s not to say that the new Trump/Vance administration should seek needless battles or gratuitous acrimony that can drain its energies and forfeit newfound public goodwill.
That is to say, however, that the Trump/Vance administration differs significantly from a more typical incoming administration.
Unlike January 2017, President Trump does not enter office unfamiliar with the Washington, D.C., landscape or policy realm. Not only does he know the lay of the land from his first term, many of his political opponents remain hardened and likely to quickly resume their own needless partisan schemes against him.
Just as importantly, Trump enters office with a greater popular mandate than he possessed in 2017, when he lost the popular vote and prevailed in the Electoral College with much slimmer margins in pivotal states.
Additionally, the Biden/Harris administration itself amounted in large part to an unrelenting four-year effort to reverse successful policies and achievements accomplished during Trump’s first term.
Accordingly, there is no time to waste in reversing four years of disastrous Biden/Harris policies and set the nation on a restored course of prosperity, innovation and strength.
To be sure, President-Elect Trump has sown no ambiguity in signaling his intent to reverse the Biden/Harris administration’s course on such high-profile issues as border control, energy policy, international relations and taxation.
On several other policy realms that receive far less attention than they merit, however, it’s important for the Trump/Vance administration to move just as forcefully.
Tech and internet policy offers a perfect example.
For two decades beginning with the Clinton administration and spanning both Republican and Democratic presidencies, the federal government maintained a light-touch regulatory approach toward internet service. That allowed the internet to flourish with rapidity and impact unseen in prior human history. Doing the bidding of powerful corporate allies, however, the Obama administration decided to upend two decades of rational internet regulation and reclassify the internet as a “public utility.”
As a result of the Obama/Biden administration’s misjudgment, private broadband investment declined for the first time in history outside of an economic recession.
Thankfully, the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Chairman Ajit Pai reversed that “Net Neutrality” regulation and resumed the longstanding light-touch regulatory approach to internet service. Private broadband investment quickly increased and internet speeds accelerated even through the period of increased use during the Covid pandemic.
Inexplicably, the Biden/Harris administration resurrected the effort to impose Net Neutrality overregulation, true to its habit of seeking to place every conceivable segment of the American economy under its control. If allowed to stand, this second effort to impose Net Neutrality will prove equally destructive, so this offers a perfect opportunity for the new Trump/Vance administration to act quickly alongside such wiser voices as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr for the benefit of our economy and American consumers.
Protection of intellectual property (IP) offers another area where the Trump/Vance administration must take quick action to protect American innovation, particular with regard to protection of patent rights. For over two centuries, the United States has protected IP – patent, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets – more reliably than any other nation in the world. As a consequence, we stand unrivaled as the most innovative and prosperous nation in human history.
Under the Obama/Biden administration, however, protection of IP rights eroded quickly. By placing renewed emphasis on protecting IP, the Trump administration reversed that trend and began to restore America’s leadership standing. Under Biden/Harris, we once again resumed our decline because the administration inexplicably chose to undermine the critical Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 while surrendering American patent rights to international competitors.
Two immediate opportunities along those lines already exist with the proposed Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA), which can clarify patent eligibility going forward, and also the Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership (PREVAIL) Act, which can restore sanity to our defective Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB).
Finally, the Trump/Vance administration should move aggressively to reverse the Biden/Harris administration’s destructive and extremist campaign to undermine the U.S. economy via excessively aggressive antitrust lawsuits through the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). There is simply no justification for ongoing lawsuits against such entities as Visa and Ticketmaster/Live Nation.
By taking swift, aggressive action in a manner different from many new administrations, the Trump/Vance administration can quickly begin to correct four years of Biden/Harris malfeasance that has caused so much harm to American consumers and our economy.
Timothy H. Lee is Senior Vice President of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom.
Reprinted with Permission from CFIF – By Timothy H. Lee
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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