The federal agency tasked with opening foreign markets to American businesses is focusing more on antitrust enforcement instead, critics say. It’s a move that has angered some free market advocates, who now worry the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is neglecting her core duties.

“The job of the USTR is to go out and win access to foreign markets for American businesses, American workers,” Gary Winslett, a senior adviser for the Chamber of Progress, told InsideSources.

Under the leadership of Katherine Tai, the USTR has emerged as an ally of controversial Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, a relentless antitrust activist whose attempts to regulate businesses have frequently been overturned by the courts. Khan has an untraditional view of antitrust, setting aside the traditional question of whether a company’s size is hurting consumers and instead arguing that some companies are simply too big, regardless of the market impact.

Similarly, Tai is taking an unconventional approach to the USTR’s job, as she explained at a recent SXSW event.

Asked about the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulations, Tai said the “trade policy formation” she is working on is “to not rely on our old instincts” of asking “what’s the nationality of your company, and ‘whose side should I be fighting on.’”

Instead, she suggested a more global view of the job as America’s top trade representative. “Right now the question that we’re looking at is, what’s the pro-democracy, pro-competition, pro-worker angle,” Tai said.

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