Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers referred to the new refined mergers guidelines as “almost like a war on business.”
The 13 new guidelines are updates made by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission in an effort to minimize threats to competition across various industries, according to a July 20 Fortune report.
“Right now, where I think where you’re moving away from low consumer prices as a standard, you’re mostly moving into problematic territory,” Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg TV, said in the Fortune report. “There’s been a lot of that in the last several years, and it sure seems like they’re pushing forward harder, rather than backing off.”
The changes were confirmed under the approval of President Joe Biden’s administration in an effort to block the mergers of conglomerates and its rivals, according to Fortune.
“The 13 new guidelines proposed Wednesday by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are part of an effort to curb the rise of companies that seek to dominate their industries by buying up rivals,” the Fortune report said. “The agencies are asking for public comment on the proposal over the next 60 days.”
Merger proposals can now be reviewed by enforcers, who will focus on the impact the deals would have on workers and potential new entries to industries, Fortune reported. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce questioned the guidelines, saying the proposal “upends decades of bipartisan consensus that mergers aid the U.S. economy.”
The guidelines, designed by U.S. regulators, were made to increase transparency between consumers and the involved companies, the DOJ’s top antitrust official, Jonathan Kanter explained in an interview with Bloomberg TV, according to Fortune.
“These guidelines — by moving away from an emphasis on lower prices for consumers to broader abstractions — are a substantial risk,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin, Fortune reported. “I wish that this stepping back and offering merger guidelines had been taken as an opportunity to rationalize the policy.”
