Dec 17 (Reuters) - U.S. Department of Justice antitrust

head Jonathan Kanter said on Tuesday that he will step down on

Friday, capping off a three-year tenure in which he aimed to

reinvigorate competition law in the U.S..

Kanter and his counterpart at the U.S. Federal Trade

Commission, Lina Khan, have sought to revive antitrust

enforcement in the U.S. as a check on corporate power, drawing

praise from Democrats and some Republicans.

"Plutocracy is its own kind of dictatorship," Kanter said in

a farewell address on Tuesday. "When companies larger and more

powerful than most world governments threaten individual liberty

with coercive private taxation and regulation, it threatens our

way of life," he said.

Some attorneys and business groups have criticised Khan and

Kanter's agenda and supported a return to a more limited view of

antitrust that has prevailed for four decades.

But President-elect Donald Trump's antitrust picks are not

seen as likely to drastically curtail enforcement.

Gail Slater, an aide to incoming Vice President JD Vance, is

poised to take over for Kanter once she is confirmed. Before

being tapped as Trump's running mate, Vance praised Khan's

efforts and said that corporations can engage in "tyrannical"

behavior.

At least until Trump takes office, Kanter's deputy Doha

Mekki will lead the antitrust division. After that point, Trump

could appoint a different acting head of the division.

Kanter has kicked the DOJ's antitrust division into high

gear, bringing cases against Apple ( AAPL ), Alphabet's Google

, Ticketmaster and Visa, and winning a

groundbreaking legal victory over Google in a case over its

dominance in online search that was brought during

President-elect Donald Trump's first administration.

The DOJ under Kanter also brought cases that successfully

block a tie up between JetBlue and American, JetBlue's proposed

$3.8 billion merger with Spirit Airlines and the $2.2 billion

merger of Penguin Random House, the world's largest book

publisher, and rival Simon & Schuster.

Kanter warned in his speech that the DOJ's antitrust work

faces an existential threat without full access to funding from

the merger filing fees it collects.