Milbank LLP Antitrust partner and former FTC Chief Trial Counsel James Weingarten discussed potential changes to the current antitrust enforcement regime under the second Trump Administration in the Global Competition Review (GCR) article “Trump admin expected to change course but not abandon ship.”
Former FTC and DOJ officials and other competition experts agree that the second Trump Administration is likely to scale back rather than shut down the current robust antitrust enforcement regime. Despite a fairly aggressive approach, competition agencies during the first Trump Administration, which brought high-profile conduct cases against Google and Facebook and ramped up merger enforcement in several industries, did not capture as much public attention or business backlash.
Mr. Weingarten notes that Chair Lina Khan’s legacy makes it harder to rely on Trump’s first term to accurately predict the administration’s antitrust agenda this time around. “The FTC has taken on a lot of prominence under Lina Khan, and as a result, it's on the radar from the incoming administration in a way that I don't think it really was in Trump I,” Mr. Weingarten said, adding, “Instead of a Republican administration allowing smoother sailing for all businesses, different industries will get the spotlight,” and predicting that “collaboration on ESG policies and conservative speech will become the main focus of Trump enforcers.”
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