President Trump has an opportunity to correct one of the more damaging policy drifts of the past several years. He could begin by dropping the appeals in the government’s antitrust cases against Google and Meta.

The Biden administration untethered antitrust from its consumer-welfare foundation and refashioned it as a tool for restructuring large companies that some officials simply disliked. Size became suspect. Success became evidence of guilt. The stated aim was to rein in “Big Tech,” but the theory often rested more on political dissatisfaction than economic harm, denying customers their rightful role of deciding whom to rein in.

Now the Trump administration risks continuing down the same road.

In the Google case, the dispute centers on distribution agreements for search. In the Meta case, the Federal Trade Commission seeks to revisit acquisitions and market definitions that were already overtaken by technological change. In both instances, trial judges recognized a basic economic reality: digital markets evolve faster than litigation.

The Google decision acknowledged concerns about long-term contracts but also recognized that any structural remedy would quickly become obsolete. The Meta ruling observed that whatever market power the company may once have had has been eroded by TikTok, YouTube, and others competing aggressively for users’ attention.

What the courts implicitly recognized is what Joseph Schumpeter described decades ago: economies advance through creative destruction, not government control. Firms earn profits by innovating; rivals respond with better products; today’s leader becomes tomorrow’s laggard if it stops improving. Success is transitory because the next innovation is always around the corner.

Yet the government has appealed both decisions.

The Justice Department says it wants to restore competition in “search.” But search as regulators define it is fading away. Consumers seek answers, not lists of hyperlinks. Artificial intelligence systems now synthesize information, respond conversationally, handle complex prompts and generate research summaries. Traditional search is becoming a feature within broader AI-driven services.

Designing remedies to revive a legacy market risks freezing competition in yesterday’s form. It would be a sad outcome if antitrust slowed America’s transition from link-based search to AI-assisted discovery, just as global competitors invest heavily in the new technologies.

The Meta case reflects a similar backward-looking logic. Social-media platforms compete for time and attention in a dynamic global arena. Users allow Meta roughly a third of their usage, hardly a monopolistic share. Treating that landscape as structurally frozen ignores the pace of technological substitution.

Behind these appeals is a growing populist strain in antitrust policy—on both the left and the right—that views enforcement as a means of redistributing economic outcomes or shielding smaller businesses from disruptive change. Some advocates openly argue that antitrust should protect firms from what the Supreme Court once called “altered surroundings.”

But protecting businesses from change turns them into fossils, not vibrant competitors.

Small firms are not merely rivals of large platforms; they are customers and suppliers. Millions of small enterprises use Google’s and Meta’s tools for advertising, logistics, customer acquisition and analytics. Slowing innovation at large technology companies doesn’t just damage Big Tech—it reduces the quality and affordability of services that smaller firms depend on to compete.

The same applies to workers. Economic growth depends on adopting new technologies and processes. If American companies face controls that constrain their abilities to innovate while foreign competitors press ahead, investment will flow elsewhere and payrolls and supply chains will follow.

America’s advantage in the global technology race has been its willingness to let markets test innovations. Europe has chosen heavier regulatory control. China relies on state direction. The United States has historically relied on dynamic competition. That model has produced world-leading companies and employees, and broad consumer benefits.

Trump’s team continuing these appeals risks substituting bureaucratic design for market discovery.

If the administration’s objective is stronger growth, higher wages and sustained technological leadership, it should recognize that innovation—not structural litigation—drives competitive markets. The courts have already signaled caution. The prudent course now is to step back.

The Trump administration can distinguish itself by celebrating economic success. Dropping the Google and Meta appeals would be a good place to start.