ProMarket’s writers review the topics that defined our coverage in 2025.
President Donald Trump had a long career as the host of the popular reality TV show The Apprentice (and its offshoot, The Celebrity Apprentice), so it comes as no surprise that he did what he does best and stole the show at ProMarket to start his second term as president. Among the 245 articles ProMarket published in 2025, one of the most prevalent themes was the politicization of antitrust and regulation. The conversation gained steam as the Federal Trade Commission under Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced its investigation into the content moderation policies of Big Tech social media platforms, which at ProMarket became a debate over the ability of the FTC to protect free speech (and the concern that the investigation was no more than a facade to suppress liberal free speech). Ferguson’s keynote speech at the Stigler Center’s 2025 Antitrust and Competition Conference did little to assuage such concerns as he outlined his agency’s intent to push back against the liberal influences he identified as compromising the openness of social media platforms and the public marketplace of ideas.
Free speech and the First Amendment were among the first of the new administration’s concerns, but it has also waded into the culture wars by looking into gender-affirming care and making the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs a requisite for merger approval. Speaking of which, no story gained more public attention than the Juniper-HPE merger, which the Department of Justice Antitrust Division approved only after lobbyists influenced top brass in the administration. The imbroglio resulted in the DOJ firing two senior officials who had protested the merger.
Politicization did not just haunt the U.S., as Vice President JD Vance and U.S. trade representatives pressured the European Union to soften regulation on U.S. Big Tech firms. The United Kingdom government pushed out the chair of its competition authority to ease the merger approval process to advance its “growth” agenda.
In any other year, developments in the U.S. Big Tech antitrust monopoly cases would have dominated our coverage. We still published plenty on them. In April, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded its case against Meta for allegedly monopolizing personal social media with the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. In November, the presiding judge rejected the government’s case in favor of Meta. Google fared less well (though better than many thought). Also last Spring a court found that Google had monopolized the ad tech space, but in September the court presiding over the Google Search case, which found Google guilty of monopolistic behavior last year, handed down remedies that critics found too light. There was also the TikTok ban that was not.
Google got away with “light” remedies in the Google Search case because of the possibilities of artificial intelligence to inject new life into internet search competition, and boy did we cover AI. The spring brought warnings of anticompetitive acquisitions of AI startups by the reigning Big Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, initial conversations about which we started in a popular symposium we ran last year. We ran another symposium this past November exploring the anticompetitive risks of AI content-licensing deals with large content owners like the New York Times or Reddit.
Speaking of symposia, this past fall we ran several others exploring if and how globalization is changing how we see the competitive role of big business, the nature of conservative antitrust, as outlined by the antitrust regulators of the second Trump administration, and the role of democracy in determining the goals and processes of antitrust regulation (and also the role of antitrust in preserving democracy). We also explored in the spring the impact of private equity on healthcare outcomes in the U.S. and the future of the Neo-Brandeisian movement.
We also covered major developments in antitrust regulation beyond the U.S. and the EU, including South Korea, China, India, and Brazil.
I promise we discuss more than antitrust at ProMarket. In the world of corporate governance, we covered the controversy of Delaware’s SB21. Proponents argued the bill will protect companies domiciled in America’s incorporation capital against increasing litigation and uncertain business planning, while critics worry it will harm shareholder protections. Also in the spring, OpenAI sought to change its non-profit status, effectively abandoning its initial mission statement to maximize benefits to society over profits, which invited concern from some corporate governance experts and scrutiny from the California and Delaware attorneys general. In October, the attorneys general approved a new plan to allow OpenAI to reorganize. ProMarket published an article in November on ExxonMobil’s new shareholder voting program, ostensibly to ease shareholder voting, less ostensibly to empower management.
Revisit our discussions about how conflicts of interest are compromising academic research, debates about the merits of the center left “abundance” economic program, and how corruption and poor corporate governance are compromising trust in capitalism.
Also revisit some of our most popular content from this year. In the new year, we will publish retrospectives on antitrust and competition in the U.S. and EU in 2025 from the experts as well as predictions on what to expect in 2026. How did the experts fare in their predictions last year? You tell us.
Be sure to sign up for our weekly newsletter Special Interest so that you never miss our daily articles. This year we also launched a new initiative to compile conference and employment opportunities for the global academic political economy community. Please send us your stuff so that we can make sure the people interested in your work see it.
Thank you to the many contributors and readers who made ProMarket a thriving platform this year. Happy holidays and New Year to all, and see you again in 2026.
Articles represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty.
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