Senate Confirms Makan Delrahim as Antitrust Chief at Justice Department
September 27 2017 - 7:11PM
Dow Jones News
By Brent Kendall
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed President
Donald Trump's nomination of Makan Delrahim to be the antitrust
chief at the Justice Department, setting the stage for a new period
of Republican enforcement after eight months of limbo.
Mr. Delrahim, 47 years old, arrives at the Justice Department
amid public uncertainty about the Trump administration's approach
to antitrust enforcement. Republican regulators generally favor a
less interventionist approach than Democrats, but Mr. Trump's
populist comments during last year's presidential campaign,
including his opposition to AT&T Inc.'s planned $85 billion
acquisition of Time Warner Inc., have complicated the usual
predictions.
Mr. Delrahim, who previously served in the Justice Department's
antitrust division during the George W. Bush administration, is
considered to be in the traditional Republican mold, though many
antitrust observers believe he won't shy away from bringing cases
when he believes they are warranted.
His nomination received bipartisan support, resulting in a 73-21
Senate vote.
But Mr. Delrahim also had his skeptics, including Sen. Elizabeth
Warren (D., Mass.), who voiced concern that he would be too
friendly to corporations. For a time her objections held up the
nomination. The two met this month and Mr. Delrahim answered an
array of questions from the senator, who agreed not to be a
roadblock to a vote.
Mr. Delrahim since January has been serving in the
administration as a deputy White House counsel, where he focused
heavily on judicial nominations, including of Neil Gorsuch for the
Supreme Court. He came to the White House after more than a decade
in private practice, where he worked predominantly on antitrust and
intellectual property matters.
The Justice Department's decision on whether to approve AT&T
deal, and under what conditions, could be one of Mr. Delrahim's
earliest and most consequential tasks. While Mr. Delrahim has been
on the sidelines awaiting confirmation, the department has been
deep into its investigation of the effects of the deal, which would
combine a top wireless and cable provider with a major U.S. media
and entertainment company.
Mr. Delrahim, in answers to senators during the confirmation
process, left himself room to maneuver. The AT&T deal is a
vertical merger -- a transaction that combine firms at different
parts of the supply chain -- and Mr. Delrahim noted that antitrust
scholars generally believe vertical mergers raise less serious
concerns than mergers that combine head-to-head competitors. But he
also said there can be times when a vertical merger could have
anticompetitive effects.
"Just because a transaction or particularly types of
transactions have been approved in the past does not mean that they
could not raise competitive concerns in the future," Mr. Delrahim
wrote in response to questions from Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.),
who has voiced objections to the AT&T deal.
Mr. Trump during the campaign said AT&T shouldn't be allowed
to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN, because it would allow too much
concentration of power in one company. Some Democrats have raised
concerns that the merger could give AT&T the ability to impede
the distribution of video content created by competitors, but they
have likewise expressed concern that the president might attempt to
use the government antitrust approval process as a way to exert
leverage over CNN, a network Mr. Trump has criticized repeatedly
for its coverage of him.
When he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May,
Mr. Delrahim pledged that his antitrust enforcement decisions would
be free from political influence from the White House.
Other deals waiting Mr. Delrahim's consideration include Bayer
AG's planned $57 billion acquisition of Monsanto Co.
His confirmation could reduce uncertainty for the business
community, which has watched government antitrust enforcers operate
throughout 2017 without Senate-confirmed leadership.
Mr. Trump has been slower than recent presidents to announce his
antitrust picks and still hasn't announced nominees for three
vacancies at the Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust
authority with the Justice Department.
Antitrust enforcement isn't considered a highly partisan affair
and enforcement differences between Republicans and Democrats more
often involve disagreements at the margins rather than seismic
shifts in policy. Nevertheless, those differences on occasion can
determine whether certain mergers receive government approval.
Obama administration officials over eight years pledged to
reinvigorate antitrust enforcement, a promise that saw mixed
success. The Justice Department in the late Obama years did
challenge several major deals, including in the health insurance
industry, during a merger boom that saw close competitors in a
range of industries attempt to combine.
But Democratic enforcers allowed continued consolidation in the
airline industry and did little to challenge conduct by dominant
companies that could be seen as stifling competition, despite a
pledge to do so.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 27, 2017 18:56 ET (22:56 GMT)
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