Breaking from longstanding tradition, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) both recently withdrew their attendance and speakership from the American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section 2025 Spring Meeting, a premier three-day conference for antitrust law professionals, mere weeks before the event was scheduled to take place from April 2-4. The withdrawal decision, made by new President Trump-appointees FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and DOJ Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Gail Slater, was based on their concerns over political bias within the ABA, including the ABA’s lawsuit against the Trump administration regarding the withholding of foreign aid payments.1
Despite the surprise withdrawal, the agencies did not altogether exit the market for antitrust law spring meetings. Instead, Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater opted to present their annual addresses at alternative venues. Both Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater spoke at the “Little Tech Competition Summit” April 2nd event hosted by Y Combinator, as well as the “Antitrust Under Trump” event hosted by The Capitol Forum later the same day.
At both events, Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater expressed similar concerns about Big Tech and asserted that they view monopolies and ‘big government” in the same light. However, both leaders also reiterated that they view M&A activity as essential to increasing competition, especially in technology sectors, with Chairman Ferguson stating that the potential of an acquisition drives investment in start-ups and innovative companies. The section below summarizes the key insights and takeaways from Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater’s speaking appearances that offer additional insight into the second Trump administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement:
Pro-Enforcement Attitude: When asked about big picture competition problems facing the country, Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater both referenced market power wielded by large tech companies and expressed a desire to increase antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolization and the exercise of monopoly power by incumbents, especially in emerging technology sectors like artificial intelligence. AAG Slater also announced that the DOJ is interested in “consumer facing markets,” particularly in sectors related to living costs for Americans. Chairman Ferguson expressed support for the FTC’s upcoming trial against Meta alleging unlawful monopolization relating to the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.
Chairman Ferguson also reaffirmed his desire to use the antitrust laws to support other parts of President Trump’s policy agenda. For example, Chairman Ferguson described how events surrounding the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic led to his “awakening” to the idea that market power can negatively affect ordinary Americans in unconventional ways, citing “the censorship epidemic that made the prevalence of Big Tech market power unavoidable in everyone’s daily lives.” Addressing whether antitrust enforcement conflicts with the Trump Administration’s deregulation agenda, Chairman Ferguson stated that “we should care about big government. We should care about over-regulation. But we should not use that as a reason to excuse big monopoly because we’re so afraid of intervention to protect Americans from big monopoly.”
AAG Slater’s statements about the state of the antitrust laws followed more traditional dialogues. She asserted that the current predominant legal framework for antitrust violations, the consumer welfare standard, has been unnecessarily narrowed by enforcers and practitioners to focus on price effects. AAG Slater emphasized that the consumer welfare standard should also consider effects on output, innovation, quality, and labor. She stated that “even staying within the consumer welfare standard, we can open up the conversation.”
Less Hostility Toward Mergers: In distinguishing the approach of the Biden administration, Chairman Ferguson noted that under the prior Chair Lina Khan/AAG Jonathan Kanter leadership, there was a “pretty obvious ideological predisposition against merger and acquisition activity,” which is a view he does not share. Chairman Ferguson criticized the prior administration for lack of clarity in merger scrutiny and dragging on investigations until a deal becomes unprofitable. At Y Combinator’s event, which focused on how antitrust enforcement can help start-ups and entrepreneurs compete against Big Tech, Chairman Ferguson emphasized that chilling M&A activity with over-enforcement can deprive start-ups of investments.
Criticizing previous FTC leadership, Chairman Ferguson explained, “I’ve heard this complaint a lot from businesses: a deal would go to the FTC and it would sort of disappear. And staff … don’t explain why it’s taking so long, don’t explain the theories that they’re relying on. And it led to tremendous uncertainty.” Chairman Ferguson then stated his attitude towards merger enforcement: “If we [FTC] think that the deal is illegal or poses a real competition problem, we’re going to act like we’re going to go to court. And if we don’t, we're going to get out of the way and we’re going to get out of the way quickly.”
Openness Toward Remedies: Further contrasting from the former President Biden enforcement approach, AAG Slater noted the previous administration’s categorical opposition to remedies and declared, “I would be more of a proponent of remedies in merger cases,” with “a strong bias for structural remedies.” AAG Slater went on to clarify that this does not mean the agencies will entertain superficial consent decrees. In particular, AAG Slater referenced the 2012 Hertz-Dollar Thrifty merger, which received clearance from the FTC conditioned upon a divestiture, but then the divestiture buyer failed and filed for bankruptcy mere months later.
Flourishing vs. Freedom: Circling back to political ideology, Chairman Ferguson and AAG Slater both placed themselves as part of the “America First movement” and the “new right.” Chairman Ferguson stated that the purpose of government is to “promote human flourishing,” which also includes government intervention “to restrict the exercise of liberty when that exercise of liberty meaningfully diminishes other people’s flourishing.” AAG Slater agreed and referenced the congressional record of Senate debates leading up to the passing of the Sherman Act in 1890, describing that senators from both parties were “very concerned about the aggregation of private power.” AAG Slater expressed pride in then-Senator John Sherman’s Republican party affiliation and paraphrased a quote: “If we won’t tolerate a king in our politics, we should not tolerate a king in the necessities of life and in commerce and so on. And these are two sides of the same coin. And so we’re just following on in that very rich tradition.”
From both speaking engagements, it is clear that both the FTC and the DOJ will continue to prioritize rigorous antitrust enforcement, especially against large technology companies that they view as having an incumbent advantage in emerging sectors.
For more insight and takeaways on the agencies’ antitrust agenda and the ABA Spring Meeting, please contact Jamillia Ferris, Maureen Ohlhausen, or any other attorney in Wilson Sonsini’s Antitrust and Competition practice.
[1] https://globalcompetitionreview.com/gcr-usa/article/doj-withdraws-aba-spring-meeting.
