Trump Administration Signals New Era in Antitrust Enforcement

Consistent with previous administration changes, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission spent the first year of the second Trump administration defining their antitrust agendas, articulating enforcement philosophies, and laying the groundwork for their priorities.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and DOJ Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater have set expectations for a more transparent merger review process, with greater reliance on established theories of harm, a renewed openness to remedies, and faster clearance for transactions that don’t raise concerns.

Administration’s Antitrust Priorities

High-profile sectors—technology, national security-sensitive industries such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence infrastructure, and health care—will likely remain at the center of antitrust inquiries in 2026. Thus far, the majority of the agencies’ enforcement actions, across various industries, have been based on traditional theories of harm based on a high concentration of the merging firms in particular relevant markets, and this type of down-the-middle enforcement is expected to continue.

Indeed, the administration’s first merger litigation win, blocking Edwards Lifesciences’s acquisition of JenaValve Technology, was a relatively traditional case where the FTC alleged that the merger combined the only two companies who were engaged in clinical trials for a particular medical device, with no other viable US competitors.

Geopolitical and domestic policies will continue to influence enforcement priorities, blending competition, national security, and economic policy considerations. Transactions that shift critical production, design capabilities, or data access abroad may trigger more probing reviews and conditions aimed at preserving domestic resilience, even where traditional market concentration metrics appear manageable. Cross-border enforcement coordination could face greater unpredictability amid geopolitical shifts. This may result in competition authorities diverging on theories of harm, timing, and remedies, creating a fragmented enforcement environment where similar issues are subject to differing resolutions depending on the jurisdiction.

Settlements vs. Litigation

In a significant departure from the last administration, both the DOJ and FTC have embraced settlements with remedies as an effective, and possibly the preferred, tool for resolving competition concerns. While the Biden administration took a hardline stance against settlements in favor of litigation and deal abandonments in the face of government scrutiny, the rhetoric and actions of the current FTC and DOJ reflect a more pragmatic approach to resolving competition issues through tailored remedies.

This openness to remedies encompasses not only divestitures but behavioral commitments, as demonstrated by the FTC’s consent decree clearing the Boeing-Spirit AeroSystems transaction, among others.

While the settlement in Boeing-Spirit includes a structural component—divestiture of key Spirit aerostructure assets—it also contains meaningful behavioral commitments that require Boeing to continue to supply Spirit products and services to Boeing rivals for military aircraft programs on a non-discriminatory basis. Such behavioral remedies have historically been used to address concerns in mergers between customers and suppliers, particularly in the technology and telecommunications sectors in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Behavioral remedies became disfavored during the first Trump administration, where the DOJ and FTC leadership expressed concerns that such remedies require government oversight for an extended period and are difficult to police, a stance that continued under Biden where remedies were out of favor entirely. Several settlements issued by the current administration have signaled that the agencies may once again be receptive to resolving antitrust issues in mergers through behavioral commitments.

With the Biden administration’s preference for litigation over settlements, merging parties were increasingly compelled to litigate to get deals done and often made unilateral remedy commitments a central feature of their litigation strategy—a so-called “litigate the fix” approach.

While remedies are back on the table under the second Trump administration, “litigating the fix” continues to be an important tool for merging parties where the government rejects a remedy proposal on the basis that it’s inadequate to preserve competition. In the GTCR-Surmodics transaction, for example, the FTC rejected the parties’ divestiture proposal as insufficient and sued to block the deal, but in rejecting the FTC’s challenge, the court found that the parties’ self-imposed remedy sufficiently ensured that the transaction isn’t likely to substantially lessen competition.

Takeaways

With the administration’s priorities now seemingly established, 2026 is expected to feature a more defined enforcement environment that favors settlements over novel theories and headline trials, creating room and opportunity for dealmakers. This also means that getting more complicated deals through may hinge less on success in litigation and more on adept early engagement with agencies and crafting remedies that address competitive concerns. Transactions posing no significant competitive issues should clear quickly under the promoted faster timelines, while agencies’ resource constraints—stemming from staffing reductions, transitions, and budget realities—could moderate the pace for more complex reviews.

At the same time, antitrust enforcement will also have a strategic role in promoting incentives to innovate and manage national resilience and geopolitical concerns. The DOJ and FTC are expected to invest in carefully chosen investigations and enforcement actions and continue to shape how competition law will interact with technology, markets, and policy in the years ahead.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Aleksandr Livshits is partner at Fried Frank and focuses on antitrust merger reviews, including governmental investigations of complex cross-border transactions, as well as antitrust compliance issues.

Lexi Michaud is an associate at Fried Frank and focuses on antitrust aspects of public and private M&A and joint ventures.

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