This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 2, 2026 - February 8, 2026

In 1906, under the administration of then US President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the Department of Justice sued a company called Standard Oil for monopoly practices under the Sherman Antitrust Act. At its peak, Standard Oil, led by John D Rockefeller, controlled nearly 90% of American oil refining, had vertically integrated the value chain from pipelines all the way to retail, and established logistical choke points in exclusive railroad benefits and controls over pipelines. Taken together, Standard Oil could basically set prices anywhere it wanted and, ultimately, decide who got to live and die as a player in the US oil supply chain.

The Sherman Act, introduced in the 1890s, was relatively toothless for several years. Despite the fact that it emerged at roughly the same time as and, maybe even in consequence of, the so-called robber barons — Jay Gould and railroads, Andrew Carnegie and steel, the House of Morgan and finance, among others — it was rarely enforced. Indeed, among its core provisions was a ban on monopolisation or attempts to monopolise. While the lack of enforcement has been attributed to the immaturity of the US legal infrastructure at the time to keep up with antitrust issues, I would venture a guess that lobbying between the robber barons — who would certainly have been in touch with the highest powers in government — and their political counterparties mattered as well.

Fast forward nearly two decades: in 1911, the Supreme Court upheld the break-up of Standard Oil, representing a tremendous milestone for the Sherman Act. Standard Oil dissolved its holding company structure (in the form of a trust) and had to create independent firms with independent boards, resulting in 34 such companies including Exxon (previously Standard Oil of New Jersey), Mobil (previously Standard Oil of New York) and Chevron (previously Standard Oil of California).

The Supreme Court, in its ruling, argued for a so-called “rule of reason” for antitrust issues. Under this “rule of reason”, just because a company is large does not mean it is illegal; rather, the Supreme Court argued that Standard Oil monopo­lised through unreasonable conduct, having used methods such as secretly negotiated railroad rebates, predatory pricing, acquiring competitors for the sake of eliminating them and more. Thus, the legality of a given monopoly did not just depend on the “impact” of that company but also on its conduct and intent in achieving that effect. Indeed, this ruling formed much of the basis used in more recent history in the cases of, for instance, AT&T and Microsoft.

While the reasoning given by the Supreme Court may seem to be focused on commercial competitive practices, there was a more integral philosophy underlying the entire case. The American government had grown too uncomfortable with these robber baron-run monopolies which behaved as private governments in and of themselves. For instance, many had hired guns on hand to bust union members during strikes. Thus, the push to break up Standard Oil had a deeper political economy component. The US government was effectively making a stand that it alone could define the extent of the concentration of power, especially of private firms. That the Standard Oil case went to the Supreme Court meant that this was constitutional and, therefore, existential to the US. The Sherman Antitrust Act was therefore more about keeping businesses subordinate to the state and less about “prices of goods and services” per se.

Fast forward to 2026. While recent news flow out of the US has been dominated by both foreign affairs matters such as Venezuela and Greenland, as well as domestic affairs issues such as the ICE actions in Minnesota, there have been smaller announcements in recent weeks as well that seem to resemble a pattern. And it is true that I may be reading too much into these announcements — in discussing these issues with some American contacts, plenty of scepticism was afoot, particularly on implementation. But I can’t help but feel this is almost like the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring movie where Galadriel says, “The world is changed, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the Earth, I smell it in the air.”

There are three things in particular that I want to highlight. I should say that I am not here to tackle the merits (or otherwise) of the economic impact and implementation likelihood of each policy but rather, to provide a view that perhaps, this is the initial innings of a longer-term movement. The first is a message by US President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform that seeks to call for a one-year cap on credit card interest rates of 10%, beginning on Jan 20. The second was also announced on Truth Social. On Jan 7, Trump announced that he would be “… immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.” This policy was a pushback against the accumulation of large portfolios of single-family rental homes (basically individual houses) over the past decade by private equity giants and real estate investment trusts, among others.

The third is Trump’s announcement on Jan 15 of “The Great Healthcare Plan”. Among the various policies in the announcement are the following, “To further reduce insurance premiums, my plan ends the giant kickbacks to insurance brokers and corporate middlemen that only drive up the costs …” and, “… the big insurance companies lose and the people of our country win.” Therefore, in a relatively short period of time, the Trump administration has stated its intention to introduce increased regulation in personal finance, in personal healthcare and in personal housing.

Taken together, none of these policies are necessarily antitrust. But rather, I personally read the three policies as a pattern in the American political economy of increasing comfort with greater state intervention into markets, a violation of the sacred-ness of “free markets” so expounded by, in particular, Republicans. Furthermore, this continued rise in regulatory risk in the US towards more pro-populist stances is not too dissimilar from what the Chinese government did in 2020 with heightened regulations on, interestingly, personal finance, private education, private transport and e-commerce platforms. It’s true that the US may not necessarily have the freedom to act in the way that China did but if the Republican Party is going to join the Democrat Party in also being a party of regulation, then the regulation wave is going to continue in the years to come for the US.

Coming back to the Sherman Act and Standard Oil — the largest, most powerful companies in the US today are the Big Tech companies namely, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, among others. These companies have driven the growth of the S&P 500 for nigh on a decade now, and counting. What if they become too big and too unwieldy and too powerful as private firms, such that the American government feels the need to rein them in and subordinate them to the state as they did Standard Oil all those years ago? It is difficult to imagine a more natural target for the state subordination of private power than American Big Tech, particularly with populist politics dominating the day.

As a final note, while many may see the need to regulate Big Tech and address its domination of platforms in the global economy, it’s also worth noting that the break-up of Standard Oil did not ultimately eliminate corporate power or redistribute wealth. Indeed, Rockefeller got wealthier after the break-up as he was given proportional stakes in each broken up company. Given conglomerate discounts no longer applied, the immediate increase in valuations of the individual companies alone made him a far wealthier man. The wheel spins, unbroken.

Nicholas Khaw is an economist and head of research at Khazanah Nasional Bhd

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