Like a fleet of ghost ships, Biden-era antitrust actions continue to sail along, creakily sailing a Sargasso Sea of indecision by new Trump-appointed regulators. No one seems to be manning these phantoms. No navy seems willing to scuttle them, either.

These legacy Biden suits against Amazon, Apple, Google, and others continue to drift along. The illogic of these antitrust actions can best be seen in the Department of Justice antitrust complaint against Visa for maintaining a “monopoly” over debit networks. This was one of many antitrust actions that came in a spasm before the 2024 election in a desperate attempt by the Biden-Harris team to prove that businesses, not unprecedented levels of federal spending and debt, were responsible for inflation.

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It is true that some 60% of debit transactions in the United States run on Visa’s network. Lulu Wang of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, however, reports that the typical Visa debit card transaction costs the merchant only around 44 cents in fees. In September, the Department of Justice alleged that Visa has this market share because it imposes “a web of exclusionary agreements” on merchants and banks that locks up “debt volume, insulates itself from competition, and smothers smaller-lower-priced competitors.”

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said. “Merchants and banks pass along these costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality of service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing — but the price of nearly everything.”

So in a bid to blame “the price of nearly everything” on Visa, the Biden administration put forward allegations that are easily knocked down by a cursory examination of the actual market and state of regulation. If such a suit were to succeed, it would empower the government to make a case against virtually any successful company.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department antitrust chief, Gail Slater, might begin by appraising vibrant competition in the debit card market. Consumers are flocking to Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Google Pay, and Apple Pay as alternatives. If Visa were a monopoly, it would eventually be able to beat these competitors and upstarts into the ground. Instead, almost none of the smaller new entrants into the marketplace over the last decade have folded or been acquired.

Visa is thus facing stiff competition from many competitors earning billions of dollars by offering real-time payment systems, digital wallets, and peer-to-peer payment systems. As blockchain technology evolves, it threatens to disaggregate middle-men networks such as Visa altogether. How all this will shake out nobody knows, which is why wise policymakers leave innovation to the market. But none of this smacks of a monopolized landscape in debt card networks.

So what tack does the government lawsuit take in the face of such evidence? Aurelien Portuese, a research professor at the GW Institute of Public Policy, concludes that “by focusing on the structure of market dominance rather than actual competitive outcomes, the government is offering a clever maneuver to avoid these otherwise counterintuitive antitrust facts.”

This lawsuit is based on another logical fallacy; the law itself already inserts a structural impediment to a monopoly. The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act requires every debit card provider to offer at least two unaffiliated networks. Thus there is a legal mandate for competition in transactions that include Mastercard, regional players, and other providers. How could Visa possibly have market control over transaction processing when it is required by law to give customers a choice of competitors? Some monopoly.

If the Justice Department sees some lack of competition, the cause may be the Durbin Amendment, not Visa’s behavior. Being forced to offer multiple routing choices is a logistical problem that not all businesses are willing to undertake. Extra expense in legal paperwork in addition to these costs of elaborate infrastructure created by the Durbin Amendment may be steering customers to Visa and Mastercard. This would not be the first time a government solution to a nonexistent problem became the problem itself.

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If there are limitations on competition in the debit card market, it is not because Visa is sitting in the catbird seat. Visa is down on the savannah, surrounded by predators. In the face of these successful upstart competitors, Visa must constantly innovate and invest, finding new efficiencies in new partnerships and services. If you believe economic efficiency is in the best interest of the consumer, you should want to scuttle this lawsuit. If not, to mimic Jeff Foxworthy, you just might be in the wrong administration.

If the current federal regulators won’t pare back these lawsuits, perhaps Republican state attorneys general will. Someone needs to stop the Biden-era ghost fleet.

Robert H. Bork Jr. is president of the Antitrust Education Project.