As the November election draws closer, Wall Street is anticipating how the deal-making environment will look under the next administration. Both the Trump and Biden presidencies amplified antitrust scrutiny, and while dealmakers do not expect enforcement to disappear, they do hope a new president brings some relief to current competition policy and enforcement.
Though Republican administrations are traditionally viewed as more business-friendly, Trump’s FTC and DOJ increasingly scrutinized deals, applying aggressive theories such as harms from vertical deals and the capture of potential and nascent competitors. Under Biden, who has proudly made antitrust enforcement a hallmark of his tenure, the agencies have only become more hawkish. Respectively led by Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division under Biden have increased the burdens of deal-making, roughly doubling the average number of complaints seeking to enjoin transactions filed each year, compared to agency filings during the Trump administration.