Throughout the 2016 campaign, the major presidential candidates prominently featured their viewpoints on antitrust enforcement, so much so that they drew commentary from former Federal Trade Commission chairman Bill Kovacic in January 2016.1 By the time President Donald Trump was inaugurated a year later, professional and business communities had spilled a lot of ink over Trump’s target campaign statements on antitrust, as well as the implications of choosing Josh Wright to lead the FTC transition team. Now, the Section of Antitrust Law of the ABA (the section) has issued a Presidential Transition Report that, perhaps more than ever before, may offer the best picture of where antitrust may move over the next four years or more.

The Report

In form, the report is an attempt to educate the administration on the current state of antitrust as well as to suggest what the federal antitrust authorities (the agencies) may wish to focus on in the new administration. The section sought to represent a range of political, ideological and professional views, and in May 2016 the ABA assembled a task force of twenty lawyers, professors and economists with broad expertise to brainstorm their recommendations. It is possible the new administration will use the report’s expert consensus as a framework for legislation to consider or judicial interpretations to seek that will shape the law in the coming years. At a minimum, the report offers practitioners and other interested observers a well-grounded perspective of antitrust challenges facing those in charge of the agencies going forward.

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