Rep. David Cicilline, chairman of the House Judiciary antitrust panel

By Cristiano Lima & John Hendel

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the newly anointed chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, has spent the opening weeks of his chairmanship pushing to review antitrust and consumer protection laws to see whether they’re compatible with the modern economy. He sat down with POLITICO in his Capitol Hill office last week to discuss his views on some of the companies and mergers that have him concerned, and about competition policy and enforcement more broadly.

How and when do you envision hearings and legislation on tech and antitrust taking shape?

[On hearings,] we’ll look at the existing antitrust statutes because I think we have statues that were essentially designed in response to the railroad monopolies a century ago. The economy’s a little bit different [now]. The concerns that these large technology platforms present are different, so I think [we should be] looking at our existing antitrust statutes and the regulations surrounding them to say, ‘Do they need to be updated or modernized in some way? Are they working effectively? Do they have the right standards?’

And then looking at what we can do legislatively, either update those statutes or provide specific [guidance on] privacy benchmarks, use of data, ways that consumers can really control how their data is used. And then finally looking at the enforcement agencies that are charged with enforcing the competition policy in this country and making sure they have the resources and the personnel and the staff they need to actually do their work successfully.

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