Next Trump Administration Will Likely Relax M&A Enforcement – Except for His Foes, Say Experts

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When it comes to policy, the president-elect’s second term will be like “a movie sequel” to his first, one antitrust attorney says

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President-elect Donald Trump with (l-r) Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter. (Chis Smith/TheWrap)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal regulators are likely to be less aggressive in their M&A enforcement over the next four years — except for those companies that attract the disfavor of incoming president Donald Trump, say antitrust attorneys who practiced during the first Trump administration.

“It will be a relaxing of merger enforcement standards, not an abandonment of merger enforcement,” Seth Bloom, a lobbyist and president of Bloom Strategic Counsel, told TheWrap. Trump “is a populist, and particularly when it comes to Big Tech, he’s willing to engage in antitrust enforcement.”

That doesn’t mean antitrust scrutiny of deals will go away or that the administration will take a laissez-faire approach.

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