Ownership

[Commentary] The government's insistence on bringing such a weak lawsuit [AT&T/Time Warner] does not bode well for the immediate future of antitrust. There are going to be plenty of mergers over the next few years that will have far more serious consequences than the AT&T-Time Warner deal. Having been slapped down in this lawsuit, the Justice Department is unlikely to be willing to go after those worthier targets, even when they raise important issues of innovation and consumer choice.

As long as the big tech is the enemy, companies are pretty much free to buy, sell and trade assets to keep from falling behind. Judge Richard Leon said as much when he approved when he approved AT&T's acquisition of Time warner. He isn’t wrong that Silicon Valley giants pose real threats to media companies.

President Donald Trump knew right away how he felt about AT&T’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. He hated it. “It’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” Trump said on the day the deal was struck in October 2016, adding that, if he were elected, his administration would block the purchase. Judge Richard Leon considered the matter for several months and in a lengthy opinion June 12 ruled that President Trump’s take, shot from the hip, was off the mark. The merger of media giants can move forward, despite legal objections by the Justice Department.

A federal judge approved the blockbuster merger between AT&T and Time Warner, rebuffing the government’s effort to block the $85.4 billion deal, in a decision that is expected to unleash a wave of takeovers in corporate America. Judge Richard J. Leon of the United States District Court in Washington said the Justice Department had not proved that the telecommunication company’s acquisition of Time Warner would lead to fewer choices for consumers and higher prices for television and internet services. 

I would like to explore three rather divergent policy issues, unified by my views on what I see as being in the best interests of American consumers.

The repeal of federal network neutrality rules became official June 11, giving broadband providers the right to block or throttle Internet traffic or to prioritize traffic in exchange for payment. But at least for now, some major ISPs are saying they won't do any of those things. The Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T websites all say they aren't doing any blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization.

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Republican Senate leaders set up a vote for the week of June 11 that would undo the White House deal to revive Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was on Capitol Hill late June 11 to lobby against the move. But Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that an agreement had been reached to wrap into the National Defense Authorization Act an amendment that would ban ZTE from buying components from US suppliers.

AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, figures prominently in the annals of antitrust law. Since the late 19th century, under various names and configurations, the entity once known as Ma Bell has often been targeted by regulators trying to rein in its size and keep it from amassing monopoly power.  On the afternoon of June 12, a federal judge is expected to issue a ruling in AT&T’s latest battle with the Justice Department, which is attempting to block the company’s $85.4 billion takeover of Time Warner.

Makan Delrahim, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, has spent months laying out a case for greater scrutiny of the country’s powerful technology industry, making the argument in speeches from Chicago to Rome. And his rhetoric — he told an audience at the University of Chicago in April that "enforcers must take vigorous action" if digital platforms harm competition — is being closely watched in the tech industry amid fears that Washington's souring view on Silicon Valley could eventually result in a crackdown.