Rough Waters Ahead: Proposed Antitrust Guidelines Spell Trouble For Big Tech, Big Pharma, And More

As mergers among major companies become increasingly prevalent, those at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have been looking for ways to toughen up antitrust enforcement to foster healthy market competition. After a list of recent losses in the courts over attempts to curtail the power of companies like Meta and Pfizer, these regulatory bodies have released new draft guidelines for merger reviews and for the first time, they include specifics on how companies can "use their scale to harm future rivals".

These proposed guidelines support the Biden Administration's agenda of implementing a tougher antitrust approach when regulating big businesses. Since Chair Lina Khan was appointed in 2021, the FTC has aggressively ramped up its enforcement actions, coming down hard on anticompetitive mergers after decades of the agency taking a so-called lackadaisical approach to antitrust prosecution. Now Khan, in collaboration with the DOJ's top antitrust