Antitrust enforcers might have occupied plenty of psychic headspace in corporate boardrooms around the globe last year, but it wasn’t because of a robust year in cartel enforcement. The folks at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett released a year-over-year analysis of cartel fines in select jurisdictions across the globe as part of their 2025 Global Cartel Forecast released yesterday.

Of particular note, cartel enforcement fines tallied just $10.2 million in the U.S. in 2024, down 96% from $263.3 million 2023—a figure that itself was quite modest by recent standards. The report notes that the $425.1 million total in cartel fines imposed during the Biden administration fell behind the $1.1 billion imposed under the first Trump administration. But even that level of cartel enforcement activity pales compared to the heyday of the Obama administration, which had single-year fine totals of $1.02 billion in 2013 and $3.8 billion in 2015.