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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Top brass firings at DOJ raise new questions about Trump's antitrust agenda
Fractures in the Trump administration's roughly six-month-old antitrust team are recasting doubts about its commitment to competition enforcement. A shake-up that led to the departure last week of two of the Justice Department's most senior officials came as corporate America was getting its bearings around the administration's competition enforcement posture, which seemed to take an aggressive yet negotiation-friendly shape. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the antitrust officials were fired after an internal clash over the division's autonomy to police competition. The report raises concern that the White House would use the division as a political tool. The fired officials, Roger Alford and William Rinner, who served in Trump's first administration, had been working on the department's challenge to Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) acquisition of rival Juniper Networks ( the report said — before a settlement was reached with HPE's politically connected lawyers, who lacked antitrust expertise. Alford was the principal deputy to President Trump's hand-picked antitrust chief, Gail Slater. Rinner, a deputy assistant attorney general, headed up merger enforcement. "Those are two of the most important deputy assistant attorney general positions," former DOJ Antitrust Division attorney William Vigen of Venable said, "and they are key advisors to the Assistant Attorney General." Boston University antitrust law professor David Olson described the new uncertainty surrounding the administration's antitrust policy as "a bit schizophrenic." Paul Steidler, a fellow with the conservative-leaning Arlington, Va.-based think tank Lexington Institute, said it's difficult to gauge if the DOJ changes mean that enforcement policy has softened. "I think it's erratic. I think it's unpredictable," he said, possibly in part because the administration is new. Steidler called the terminations "troubling" and "confusing," especially given that the White House has offered no official reason for the decisions. Merger challenges like the one against HPE — filed roughly a week after Trump took office — appeared to signal the administration's plans to vigorously pursue competition concerns. Further underscoring its offensive approach, the administration pushed ahead with antitrust prosecutions targeting the biggest names in tech, including Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META). "So early on, it seemed there would be a lot of continuity from the Biden Administration's antitrust enforcement to the Trump Administration," Olson said. "But this pro-enforcement approach is facing headwinds." Olson and other antitrust experts said the mysterious enforcement tactics may be related to administration goals that act as a double-edged sword. On one hand, Trump has repeatedly said he would crack down on Big Tech's dominance. And under his administration, the DOJ and its enforcement partner, the Federal Trade Commission, confirmed they would keep in place stricter Biden-era 2023 merger guidelines. Alford said during a panel discussion at George Washington Law School in May that the administration's focus was on mergers that threatened to drive up prices on goods and services that impact everyday Americans. But at the same time, the president has encouraged regulators to get out of the way in the interest of advancing US artificial intelligence. An "AI Action Plan" announced by the president two weeks ago calls for reviewing and potentially recalibrating Biden-era antitrust enforcement actions in the AI sector. Steidler said those competing interests make Slater's role a difficult balancing act under an administration seeking to appeal to two different constituencies: conservatives who don't like Big Tech and the business community that wants sensible, fair mergers to go forward. Gaynor said that if the enforcement agenda is left in limbo, it could counteract economic growth. Companies, he added, make decisions in part based on what actions are likely to trigger antitrust investigations. "If it looks to people in business like enforcement is either completely unpredictable, or might be based on political considerations," Gaynor said, "that's not good for business. It's not good for the economy. It's not good for consumers. And it's not good for America." Olson added that President Trump's hands-on approach to dealmaking could also spell uncertainty for business, because antitrust officials have historically maintained autonomy to enforce the nation's competition laws. "It seems that Alford, Rinner, and also Slater were opposed to this method of settling an antitrust case because it violates long-standing norms of insulating antitrust enforcement from political pressure," Olson said. The Justice Department sued Hewlett Packard in January, alleging that the $14 billion tie-up to combine the nation's second- and third-largest providers of enterprise wireless networking would substantially lessen market competition. Five months later, in June, the department announced it had settled with HPE and would allow the merger to go forward by requiring HPE to divest its global "Instant On" WLAN business to a DOJ-approved buyer, plus ensure it would license key software assets to rivals. One of the lawyers who reportedly took part in the negotiations, Mike Davis, called Slater his "good friend" in an April 29 post to the social media platform X. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the negotiations, Slater ceased communications with Davis. Vigen agreed that it's too early to assess if the administration has softened its enforcement approach. However, he said, mid-litigation shifts could jeopardize staff morale. "It's not just the Assistant Attorney General and her people in leadership," Vigen said. "Think about the trial attorneys that put in the work on these cases ... it can be quite demoralizing." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Top brass firings at DOJ raise new questions about Trump's antitrust agenda
Fractures in the Trump administration's roughly six-month-old antitrust team are recasting doubts about its commitment to competition enforcement. A shake-up that led to the departure last week of two of the Justice Department's most senior officials came as corporate America was getting its bearings around the administration's competition enforcement posture, which seemed to take an aggressive yet negotiation-friendly shape. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the antitrust officials were fired after an internal clash over the division's autonomy to police competition. The report raises concern that the White House would use the division as a political tool. The fired officials, Roger Alford and William Rinner, who served in Trump's first administration, had been working on the department's challenge to Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) acquisition of rival Juniper Networks ( the report said — before a settlement was reached with HPE's politically connected lawyers, who lacked antitrust expertise. Alford was the principal deputy to President Trump's hand-picked antitrust chief, Gail Slater. Rinner, a deputy assistant attorney general, headed up merger enforcement. "Those are two of the most important deputy assistant attorney general positions," former DOJ Antitrust Division attorney William Vigen of Venable said, "and they are key advisors to the Assistant Attorney General." Boston University antitrust law professor David Olson described the new uncertainty surrounding the administration's antitrust policy as "a bit schizophrenic." Paul Steidler, a fellow with the conservative-leaning Arlington, Va.-based think tank Lexington Institute, said it's difficult to gauge if the DOJ changes mean that enforcement policy has softened. "I think it's erratic. I think it's unpredictable," he said, possibly in part because the administration is new. Steidler called the terminations "troubling" and "confusing," especially given that the White House has offered no official reason for the decisions. Merger challenges like the one against HPE — filed roughly a week after Trump took office — appeared to signal the administration's plans to vigorously pursue competition concerns. Further underscoring its offensive approach, the administration pushed ahead with antitrust prosecutions targeting the biggest names in tech, including Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META). "So early on, it seemed there would be a lot of continuity from the Biden Administration's antitrust enforcement to the Trump Administration," Olson said. "But this pro-enforcement approach is facing headwinds." Olson and other antitrust experts said the mysterious enforcement tactics may be related to administration goals that act as a double-edged sword. On one hand, Trump has repeatedly said he would crack down on Big Tech's dominance. And under his administration, the DOJ and its enforcement partner, the Federal Trade Commission, confirmed they would keep in place stricter Biden-era 2023 merger guidelines. Alford said during a panel discussion at George Washington Law School in May that the administration's focus was on mergers that threatened to drive up prices on goods and services that impact everyday Americans. But at the same time, the president has encouraged regulators to get out of the way in the interest of advancing US artificial intelligence. An "AI Action Plan" announced by the president two weeks ago calls for reviewing and potentially recalibrating Biden-era antitrust enforcement actions in the AI sector. Steidler said those competing interests make Slater's role a difficult balancing act under an administration seeking to appeal to two different constituencies: conservatives who don't like Big Tech and the business community that wants sensible, fair mergers to go forward. Gaynor said that if the enforcement agenda is left in limbo, it could counteract economic growth. Companies, he added, make decisions in part based on what actions are likely to trigger antitrust investigations. "If it looks to people in business like enforcement is either completely unpredictable, or might be based on political considerations," Gaynor said, "that's not good for business. It's not good for the economy. It's not good for consumers. And it's not good for America." Olson added that President Trump's hands-on approach to dealmaking could also spell uncertainty for business, because antitrust officials have historically maintained autonomy to enforce the nation's competition laws. "It seems that Alford, Rinner, and also Slater were opposed to this method of settling an antitrust case because it violates long-standing norms of insulating antitrust enforcement from political pressure," Olson said. The Justice Department sued Hewlett Packard in January, alleging that the $14 billion tie-up to combine the nation's second- and third-largest providers of enterprise wireless networking would substantially lessen market competition. Five months later, in June, the department announced it had settled with HPE and would allow the merger to go forward by requiring HPE to divest its global "Instant On" WLAN business to a DOJ-approved buyer, plus ensure it would license key software assets to rivals. One of the lawyers who reportedly took part in the negotiations, Mike Davis, called Slater his "good friend" in an April 29 post to the social media platform X. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the negotiations, Slater ceased communications with Davis. Vigen agreed that it's too early to assess if the administration has softened its enforcement approach. However, he said, mid-litigation shifts could jeopardize staff morale. "It's not just the Assistant Attorney General and her people in leadership," Vigen said. "Think about the trial attorneys that put in the work on these cases ... it can be quite demoralizing." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
Politico
30-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
The tech deal behind DOJ drama
A major deal between two tech companies is threatening to tear the Department of Justice's antitrust division apart. The DOJ this week reportedly fired two senior antitrust officials, and the story so far has been insidey, gossipy and shrouded in mystery about intra-Republican tensions. The Wall Street Journal reports that the officials — Roger Alford and William Rinner, who had served in the department during President Donald Trump's first term — were fired for insubordination after weeks of discord within the division about a corporate acquisition. The firing also calls into question the future of antitrust chief Gail Slater's tech enforcement agenda. Curiously, the deal at the center of the drama was — if anything — a run-of-the-mill antitrust case. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a wireless network company, proposed to acquire another internet services company called Juniper Networks in 2024, for $14 billion. Juniper was known for its innovations in incorporating AI into wireless systems, and like seemingly every other company in the tech world, HPE wanted to build more AI into its business. But the purchase rang antitrust alarm bells. Prior to the merger, HPE and Juniper were the second and third largest companies in the wireless network market respectively, behind Cisco. The DOJ sued in January to block the merger — its first antitrust challenge under Trump's second term. And then, abruptly, it dropped the case and settled in June, after winning some relatively small-bore concessions from the companies. According to the Journal, the firings were the result of an internal feud — and specifically, an argument over the potential influence of Trump-connected lawyers hired by HPE. This followed reporting by CBS that DOJ higher-ups had overruled Slater and her antitrust division to accept HPE's settlement offer and drop the suit. The department, in a statement, wrote to DFD that the decision 'was based only on the merits of the transaction.' An official at the White House told DFD that the allegations of political meddling in the deal were 'inaccurate and untrue,' and that it had not held a meeting regarding HPE in the past several weeks. So how did the HPE lawsuit end up the source of such internal drama? Legal experts told my colleague Nate Robson, when it was filed in January, that this was a pretty cookie-cutter case. The issue instead is the way that it ended, when the DOJ settled the case less than a week before it was set to go to trial. 'Settling close to trial isn't unusual,' said William Kovacic, chair of the FTC under President George W. Bush. 'Settling on weak terms is.' When the DOJ filed its challenge to the acquisition with a federal court in San Francisco, the department seemed to have a strong case. It contended that the two companies were fierce competitors. The complaint noted that HPE had been lowering prices and improving products to maintain its lead — the kinds of benefits to consumers that antitrust law is supposed to promote. Kovacic told DFD the department had convincingly alleged that the merger could lead to a 'significant increase in concentration' of power in a 'properly defined relevant market' in a way that would harm consumers. 'That usually is enough to create a presumption of illegality,' he said. HPE hired two Trump-connected lawyers to press its case, according to both the Journal and CBS. In June, the DOJ abruptly settled with the two companies. The settlement stipulated that the merger could go through if HPE divested its Instant On business for campus network services. It would also have to license Juniper's AI Mist system for local wireless networks. Some argue that those terms aren't quite commensurate with the DOJ's original concerns. 'The complaint on its face tells a pretty general story about harm to competition in the wireless solution market, including pretty big enterprise customers,' said Daniel Francis, who served as a deputy competition director at the Federal Trade Commission during Trump's first term. 'The proposed solution package seems much narrower.' (Francis, who worked with both Alford and Rinner during Trump's first term, called them 'straight shooters.') The Instant On business primarily serves certain small and medium-sized organizations, not larger ones. Francis added that the particular AI application was only one component of the broader competitive concerns. These legal oddities have fueled even more granular suspicions about politics driving the decision. A former official in the department's antitrust division pointed DFD to the signature page of the settlement agreement, which does not include any career antitrust attorneys. 'The moment I saw it, the moment many of my other former colleagues saw, it screamed [to us] as something strange happened here,' said the official, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality restrictions. While this may indicate that career antitrust officials didn't have much say in the matter, it's at least plausible that there were solid, non-political reasons. Axios reported on Wednesday that intelligence officials intervened to persuade the DOJ that the merger would be critical for competing with China-backed companies. It's unclear how exactly this would impact national security, though HPE does contract with the Department of Defense. However, this looks to some like a fig leaf. Douglas Farrar, an FTC official during the Biden administration, wrote on X that the intelligence community in his experience would 'never step in to stop a regulator from blocking an illegal deal.' Kovacic said there needs to be a strong national security case for it to play a major factor. 'You've got to explain in what way the merger implicates those concerns,' said Kovacic. 'You cannot get your deal through simply by coming in and saying, 'China, China, China.'' The White House doubles down on AI exports One of Trump's top tech officials made the case Wednesday for pushing American AI technology abroad despite the risks of it falling into the hands of foreign adversaries, POLITICO's Mohar Chatterjee reports. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, argued at a national security event that increasing AI exports is the best way to compete with China. 'Everyone in the world should be using our technology, and we should make it easy for the world to use it,' Kratsios said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He added, 'If most countries around the world are running on an AI stack that isn't American and potentially ones of an adversary, that's a really, really big problem.' Krastios further asserted that security measures like tracking shipments and verifying the identities of customers could keep restricted U.S. technology out of China's hands. Kratsios's comments come as critics raise concerns over the administration's decisions to send chips to build data centers in the Middle East, and resumed sales of Nvidia's H20 chips to China. EU deal leaves open questions on tech rules After striking a trade deal Sunday to avoid a battle of tariffs, the European Union and U.S. now have differing views on how it would affect tech regulations, POLITICO Europe reports. In broad strokes, the handshake deal places a 15 percent tariff on goods from the EU and calls for multi-billion-dollar purchases of U.S. military and energy products. Not mentioned in the agreement to the chagrin of some Republicans and tech leaders are strict EU laws that restrict AI development, content moderation and data collection. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had previously said such tech regulations were not up for debate, and an EU official told POLITICO Monday that the bloc had not made any commitments regarding them. A day later, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke of the EU's 'attack on our tech companies' on CNBC. 'That's going to be on the table,' he said. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Bloomberg
04-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump's Merger Watchdogs Will Be More Open to Approving, Negotiating Deals
Antitrust watchdogs will be more open to approving acquisitions under President Donald Trump, according to the US Justice Department 's head of merger enforcement. The department will place greater emphasis on negotiation than the Biden administration, seeking asset sales and other measures for companies to complete deals rather than going to court, William Rinner said in prepared remarks he plans to deliver on Wednesday.
