Raimondo Watch

Raimondo is “Tech’s favorite Biden official,” and it’s easy to see why.

In 2021, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter commented on President Biden’s promise to hold corporations accountable — especially Big Tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — for hijacking our economy. “We’re turning the page on a failed experiment” and stepping up antitrust and merger enforcement, he said.

In sector after sector, from tech to banking to transportation to agriculture, the Justice Department and the FTC have followed through on the President’s promise. But Gina Raimondo’s steering the Department of Commerce in a somewhat different direction. She’s fighting back not against Big Tech, but against regulation — and not just in the United States, but on a global stage.

Big Tech CEOs and lobbyists couldn’t be more thrilled. All by themselves, the five big-name companies brought in more than $17 billion in revenue last year, and thanks to the intervention of Raimondo and her team at Commerce, they’re poised to grow even faster. (Guess who’s going to pay for that.)

Raimondo has been called “Tech’s favorite Biden official.” Senior software industry lobbyist Craig Albright called her “a star player,” observing that “[s]he is making the phone calls, she's making the case” for the kind of toothless regulation that will help tech companies make even more money.

Raimondo’s staff and advisors move back and forth through the revolving door, making big money as they hijack policy to help their Big Tech friends.

Analysis shows there are more conflicts of interest in Commerce than in any other Cabinet department: a full 18 percent of Commerce staffers work as lobbyists before their government service, after it, or both. Given Secretary Raimondo’s personal big-business ties, the Commerce conflict problem is worse than ever in this administration. And no industry reaps more benefit from all those conflicts of interest than Big Tech.

When Commerce staff become Big Tech lobbyists, they bring with them their experience about how government works, their insider knowledge about the administration’s policy plans, and, above all, their network of friendships. Deals that set the course of U.S. regulatory policy aren’t just made at Commerce headquarters on Constitution Avenue and in Capitol conference rooms; they happen over handshakes in corporate boardrooms, and over drinks in the fancy hotel bars lobbyists frequent.

And when Big Tech lobbyists take jobs at Commerce, well, they’re in a position to steer policy directly. “Regulatory capture” is what it’s called, and given the astonishing sums of lobbying cash that giant corporations blow in Washington every year, it’s one of the biggest challenges that honest regulators face.

Walking in through the revolving door...

Big Tech plants lobbyists and lawyers at Commerce so they can whisper in the Secretary’s ear.

...And walking back out again

When they’ve got what they wanted out of government service, Big Tech hires them back, and pumps them for what they know.

Companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple — and the tech industry groups that represent them, like the Chamber of Progress — were delighted with Raimondo’s strong stance. But smaller U.S. companies, whose survival is put at risk by the size of the tech giants, supported the proposed regulations, and even helped in the drafting of them.

In Gina Raimondo’s Commerce Department, tech companies with connections can get around the law in other areas, too. Lawmakers have said that Raimondo has been too free in giving companies exemptions that allow them to sell sensitive technology to China, in violation of the regulatory intent. That’s not just an economic issue — it means Raimondo is actively undermining the foreign policy of the United States, with potentially disastrous geopolitical consequences.