On July 9, the White House announced a new executive order heavily restricting the monopolization practices of Big Tech. Big Tech, a shorthand term for the five biggest technology companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft), has been a crucial centerpiece in both the American and the global economy, but also a thorn in the side of Washington’s legal ties. President Joe Biden has taken a risk by opting to push forwards a new set of regulations, which is potentially a successful countermeasure against corporate monopolization. Nevertheless, his decision failed to escape criticism from both sides of the fence.

What Looms Beyond Big Tech’s Horizon?

“Today President Biden is taking decisive action to reduce the trend of corporate consolidation, increase competition, and deliver concrete benefits to America’s consumers, workers, farmers, and small businesses,” reads the White House briefing. This move, while certainly not welcomed by many, is not out of left field either. It merely amounts to being the latest tactical manoeuvre in Washington’s struggle against the astronomic growth and market monopolization of Big Tech.

Professor Lee Hwang (School of Law) explains how the rapid paradigm change led by the Fourth Industrial Revolution has allowed Big Tech to polarize the market, while the American legal system was left stranded with no appropriate measures to counter them. “While the traditionally anti-monopoly Democratic Party has attempted to take action since their election earlier this year, many still disagree with the policy,” explains Professor Lee, quoting certain critics who have expressed their worries about how “such laws could demoralize innovation and go directly against consumer interests.”

The White House gives assurances that on the average American citizen side of the equation, the executive order is supposed to bring about multiple benefits such as a raise in wages and the empowerment of smaller businesses. However, as can be deduced from the scale of the backlash that it has faced, there may be more to the order than what the White House is willing to disclose.

One of the issues that Big Tech has with the new order is how it utilizes its authority over the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Earlier in June, President Biden had confirmed Lina Khan, a renowned critic of Amazon, as the new chairwoman of the FTC, much to the tech giant’s chagrin. In hindsight, many consider this to be a precursor to the White House’s current efforts to influence the FTC into pressuring Big Tech, in which the FTC was encouraged to take steps towards preventing Big Tech from collecting consumer information. To companies like Amazon which heavily rely on leveraging consumer information for their business tactics, such restrictions can cause significant damage. While Amazon has responded by calling for Khan to step down, they have yet to show any tangible counteractions.

Across the Pacific

However, the United States (U.S.) was not the first country to introduce such regulations. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is famed for keeping its tech companies — BATX, short for Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi — strictly in line, wielding its anti-monopolization laws as a whip. This is to no real surprise though, considering how the PRC has long held that its economy is run under the principle of a Socialist Market Economy (SME). The SME system is heavily based on state ownership of enterprises, and while it does allow private economic ventures, the limits of what one individual can operate are very much set in stone.

The recent disappearance of former Alibaba chairman Jack Ma is a remarkable example of how rigorous such restrictions are. After Ma expressed his distaste towards the Chinese economic system in a public forum in 2020, he disappeared for almost three months, while Alibaba was hit by a massive 18 billion yuan fine for monopolization charges. While the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) stated that Alibaba was charged for “infringing on the businesses of merchants,” foreign critics suspect that Ma and Alibaba were merely used as an example to show what happens when individuals cross the boundaries that the government has set.

Compared to the U.S., the Chinese government seems to have different goals in mind. The typical Chinese mindset of “The Greater Good” in comparison to the American individualist attitude seems to apply to corporate matters too, with the government placing an emphasis on curtailing individual companies in the present to prevent further complications in the future.

Back in Korea

Anti-monopolization regulations are far from an overseas-exclusive issue, with South Korea also having seen more than its fair share of conglomerate domination. Naver, for example, has an iron grip on the Korean market, while communications giant Kakao has all but taken over as a domestic standard for online texting. Yet Korea’s set of regulations preventing such market domination are wanting at best, possibly due to the government’s remnant laissez-faire attitude from the Miracle of the Han River age when economic growth far outweighed fair market practices in priority.

Professor Lee thus suggests that Korea needs its own, unique set of regulations that fit the country’s specific dilemmas instead of modelling them after the U.S. or the PRC. “South Korea’s corporations have prioritized dominating domestic markets before expanding globally against American platforms,” he notes, “and this, while a rare case internationally, is crucial to maintaining sustainable growth of the Korean economy.” While Professor Lee does note that the infringement of certain consumer rights is apparent in Korea, he still deduces that the government should thus consider Korea’s unique circumstances surrounding conglomerate growth when introducing changes to the regulations that the Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has already set in place.

Whilst both the U.S. and the PRC have sufficient countermeasures in the case of policy failure, Korea is not blessed with such fallback options. The fact that the nation is going through an unprecedentedly arduous phase caused by a nose-diving economy combined with a global pandemic further amplifies the notion that attempting to implement drastic anti-corporate measures amidst such a fiscal disaster may worsen the catastrophic situation in Korea. Furthermore, the situation in Korea is not exactly what one would call a “clean slate.” What the new American regulations remind us of, however, is that no matter where in the process the starting point is, the need for balance is always crucial.