White House antitrust adviser Tim Wu set to depart

Tim Wu, the tech expert and law professor who spent most of the last two years advising the White House on tech and competition policy, is stepping down from his role next week, a White House spokesperson said on Friday.

Wu will be returning to his professorship at Columbia Law School after serving since March 2021 on the National Economic Council as the special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. Wu was the architect of President Joe Biden’s2021 executive order on competition policy that directed agencies across the federal government to boost competition throughout the economy.

Wu’s portfolio will be divvied up among current White House staffers. Hannah Garden-Monheit will handle competition policy, after working on the issue alongside Wu since joining the administration in February 2021. Elizabeth Kelly, who has led the NEC’s work on digital assets since early 2022, will take over tech policy issues. The White House said more people would be added to the team in the coming months.

“We had the rare opportunity in this Administration to try and steer the giant battleship of antitrust policy in a new direction,” Wu said in a statement provided by the White House. “We got more done over the last two years than I would have ever imagined, and it has been the opportunity of a lifetime to work on that project with an extraordinarily talented group of colleagues in the White House and the federal agencies.”

The New York Times previously reported Wu’s imminent departure. POLITICO and other news organizations previously reported this summer that Wu was planning to step down.

Biden’s executive order focused on increasing competition in industries including technology, health care, transportation and agriculture, and was designed to encourage agencies outside the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to focus their attention on antitrust issues.

Additionally, Wu helped lead the White House push on a largely failed attempt to pass new antitrust legislation targeting the tech sector.

“In the last two years, the Federal government has moved to not only reverse decades of erosion in antitrust enforcement, but to reignite a great American tradition of Presidential leadership on competition policy, harkening to the era of Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt,” NEC Director Brian Deese said in a statement. “Over the next two years, we will continue to institutionalize bipartisan, pro-competition reforms across agencies to lock in this progress for decades to come.”