Trump's Tech Allies Push Monopoly Over Market Competition

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Trump’s billionaire allies seek more monopoly profits, not competition. With policies increasingly crafted in their favour, wealth concentration is set to grow more than ever.

There’s no clear consensus on what neoliberal economics stands for today. Many who claim to be liberal economists hold different—even contradictory—views.

Some advocate market competition and oppose monopolies and oligopolies. For others, property rights are paramount, typically strengthening monopoly control.

Many self-proclaimed neoliberals downplay competition and hesitate to push for antitrust action or resist market power abuses.

Property rights confer monopoly or exclusive ownership over assets, typically denying others access except through payment. Many such rights are recent developments.

As UK Prime Minister from 1979, Margaret Thatcher sparked a global neoliberal counter-revolution, especially in the Anglosphere.

With generally less public ownership, the US economy has long been more private, leaving little room for privatisation.

PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel is the most influential of the so-called ‘tech bros’ backing re-elected US President Donald Trump.

Thiel, Trump’s biggest donor during his surprise 2016 victory, is also the mentor and major backer of Vice President JD Vance.

In 2014, Thiel’s essay, Competition is for Losers, cemented his status as a leading apologist for lucrative rentier monopolies, particularly those invoking intellectual property rights (IPRs).

Thiel notes that ‘perfect competition’ is presented as the ideal and default state in Economics 101 textbooks. Firms in competitive markets are presumed to sell identical goods, leaving them with no market power and forcing them to sell at market-determined prices.

In such a market, rising demand triggers investment, which increases supply, reduces prices, and shrinks profits. There’s no room for economic rents under perfect competition. But monopolies, cornering markets, can raise prices easily.

With buyers having no alternatives, monopolists can control supplies and maximise profits. Thus, profit maximisation depends on securing monopoly power, not embracing competition.

Thiel observes, “To an economist, every monopoly looks the same, whether it deviously eliminates rivals, secures a license from the state, or innovates its way to the top.”

The state plays a contradictory role—granting patents that create monopolies while enforcing antitrust laws intended to challenge them.

Thiel claims to oppose “illegal bullies or government favourites”, yet acknowledges that governments create and sustain monopolies he champions.

He mocks the American reverence for competition, declaring, “Capitalism and competition are opposites. Under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.”

Thiel openly admits that monopolists are “incentivized to bend the truth” and “lie to protect themselves…from being audited, scrutinized and attacked.” He wants monopoly power and profits to grow—untaxed and undistributed.

While monopolists accumulate rents in static conditions, Thiel insists that “creative monopolies” drive innovation and societal progress.

For him, monopolies are so effective that no firm can offer a close substitute. “The history of progress,” he claims, “is a history of better monopoly businesses replacing incumbents.”

Thiel dismisses mainstream economists’ focus on competition as outdated and irrelevant to real-world business. In his view, every successful business is a monopoly to some degree.

Today’s neoliberal economists often emphasise property rights, ignoring their traditional support for market competition. Competition is dismissed as an outdated relic, as monopoly capitalism fuels growing wealth and income inequality.

Thiel exaggerates the contribution of monopolies to innovation and progress, downplaying their harms to consumers, markets, and society.

With tech billionaires increasingly backing Trump, his second term promises further enrichment for rentiers like Thiel.

Trump’s selective tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulatory policies are set to increase US government debt and deepen fiscal inequality.

As America’s economic agenda shifts to serve monopoly interests, Trump’s loyal base remains unaware that they’re serving the very billionaire class they rail against.