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Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to a special edition of Bloomberg Law. I'm Ami Morris in for June Grosso. This year saw a number of high profile antitrust cases, so ahead on this show, we're going to take a look back at some of the big ones, including the blocked merger between Albertson and Kroger and the
fan tie up between luxury brands Capri and Tapestry. We'll also look ahead to what President elect Donald Trump re entering the White House could mean for anti trust regulation moving forward. All that on the way on this special edition of Bloomberg Law. Now, what we're going to start with is non compete employment agreements. For decades, they've prevented all sorts of workers, doctors, engineers, hairstylists, and journalists from
easily just switching jobs. The Federal Trade Commission approved a near total ban on these non compete clauses, but then that got blocked by a federal judge back in August. The judge said the FTC did not have the authority to do this. Professor Spencer Weber Waller is director of the Institute of the Consumer Anti Trust Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and joins us now to bring us up to speed on what this means. Professor, want to thank you for your time and explain about
this block of what the FTC's proposed rule was. The judge called it arbitrary and capricious. But supporters say that if you force workers to sign and on compete that does harmed them.
Well, sure, I'm chrilled to talk about this. I can't get into how the sausage was made. This was one of the projects that they worked on in twenty twenty two as a senior advisor for the Federal Trade Commission. But the idea is that these are very harmful for workers, and particularly in low salary workers, where there's really no serious question for a sandwich maker or a security guard or home healthcare worker about know how or technology or
that sort of thing. And so the FTC was engaged in a long term project, research reports, conferences, and eventually the writing of an administrative rule that was released to the public for comments and revised and kind of toned down.
A little bit.
Final rule was issued. This is earlier this year, and there was some litigation and it's a little more complicated. There are three different cases. The FTC won one of those in Pennsylvania and lost to in the Deep South, one of which it resulted in an injunction. So the rule hasn't gone into effect. I don't think this is a I think it's going to go to the Court
of Appeals and conceivably the US Supreme Court. At the same time, the FTC has also brought cases where it has the power to prohibit an unfair method of competition, either in litigation or in rule making. These cases only
deal with the rulemaking. There have been at least three cases that I know of where the STC has challenged companies behavior in the particular industry as just unfair in keeping workers' wages and mobility down, and the courts have in each case the defendants have settled, and those are binding rulings now on those defendants. But the rule is the bigger deal because it would apply nationwide to most industries and most non competes.
Now, this is under the FDC's purview, is it not. If they can't come up with this rule, then who would.
Well, there's any there's a turny number of industries that are just not subject to the FDC's jurisdiction, things like airlines and other other regulated industries. But the FDC is the main, but not the only, consumer protection and antitrust agency. The Department of Justice litigates, but the FTC has the power to do both litigation and rulemaking, and this is
what the rule making power. It is not the only, but it is one of the rare times the FTC has issued a rule relating to their antitrust not their consumer protection powers.
I wanted to ask about that this doesn't happen very often with the FTC, and these noncompete clauses have been in effect for decades. Where's the FTC been on this before?
Well, the FTC is one of a number of actors that has looked at this. State attorney generals and state legislatures in the US Congress have looked at these. There are seventeen states or so that either prohibit them outright, like California, or imposed conditions. When you can have the non compete in Illinois, there's a salary cap of about one hundred thousand dollars, where anything below that the noncompete would be illegal. And what the evidence is showing is
that even having these state rules just isn't enough. And if you want a uniform national treatment of this issue, the FTC is the logical place. Whether they have the powers to do so is what's being litigated in the federal courts right now.
Is this another example of sort of reigning in power from federal agencies resting that from them.
That's hard to say. You know, you're absolutely correct that the FTC has not issued a lot of antitrust unfair methods of competition rules, but that doesn't mean they don't have the power but that is one of the issues that the federal courts have to wrestle with, and looking at this particular rule, I don't know the history of why past administrations didn't do it. I think perhaps they thought that it was better to proceed just on a case by case basis in general, rather than getting into
a rulemaking proceeding. But I thought it was necessary and quite a good thing that the FTC did, and I hope it'll hold up in court. But you know, I don't have a crystal ball that's any better than anybody else at this point.
And it is interesting how you say how complicated this is, because it also put companies in a bit of an odd position. For a while. It wasn't really clear if the FDC was able to do this, if this was going to pass muster, if there was going to have
to be shelved. For a while, employers were kind of in this mezzanine level where they didn't know if they were able to tell their workers that the non compete was no and void, or if it was something that they could enforce, and so everything was in limbo for a while.
Well, and it is still in limbo, you know, as this gets resolved. And so you know what I understand. I'm not a labor and employment expert. I'm an anti trusted the consumer law person. But my friends in that minor work are telling companies to be very cautious and not to use these unless they have a strong reason
to do so. Do them more selectively rather than across the board, and be aware that there's some states that they're simply flat out forbidden, like California, and also that there's legislation coming in other states that's cracking down on this. So state companies are on notice. And you know, the rule is just one aspect of how this is going to be regulated in the future.
I know you don't have a crystal ball, you said so yourself, But what does this say then about the future of work? How far can this go?
Well, you know what's likely to tee this up for Supreme Court review is if you get a split in the circuits. If you get, say, for example, the case in Pennsylvania where the FTC won, if the third circuit were to uphold that point of view, and let's say one of the circuit courts in the South were to find it's unlawful, and that's the kind of thing where the Supreme Court offer often ways in and yes, you're
absolutely correct. They're not a fan of independent agency regulatory power, and the FDC faces a number of constitutional administrative wat challenges. The narrow list is that you know, the agency is fine for methods of competition are fine. They're even fine if you use them in a particular case against noncompete clauses. But there's a narrow path where they could say, you don't have the rulemaking authority to do this, but you do have the power to seek an individual case against
an individual of the Senate. Problem with that is that's like lack of mole really in all fairness to business and to consumers and to employers employees, a nationwide uniform orle is the best way to tackle this in my view.
Okay, we're going to continue to watch that as it makes its way through the courts. Meanwhile, we're going to shift gears now and talk about big tech and Google antitrust enforcing, wanting the search giant Google to make some big changes, including potentially selling its Chrome browser now. Professor Google says any remedy would allow competing browsers like Apple Safari to actually have the freedom to do the deals with whatever search engine that they think is best for
their users. That's what they want to see happen. That's what they say should happen. The judges said that it's illegal for Google to pay Apple to use Google's browser as their default. Does Google have a point here, you know, market freedom, free enterprise, that sort of thing.
Well, you know, this is one of a number of you know, probably the busiest few years in monopolization law in my lifetime, and Google was the case that finished first, and it was a great victory for the government. Google was found to have monopoly power over different aspects of search and that they violated the law by entering into those exclusive deals, paying the huge amounts of money that
we've all read about. But they didn't obtain this monopoly unlawfully, at least the court didn't make any findings like that. But they did unlawfully maintain that monopoly. So you're right, everything rests with the remedy. And this case follows in the footsteps of Microsoft about a generation ago, where you have a company that didn't do anything wrong but had a monopoly and then started doing lots of things wrong
to maintain that monopoly. And the problem in the Microsoft case was that the court kind of lost its mind when it got to the remedy's face. It wrote a really terrific, lengthy, detailed opinion the district court of why Google had acted unlawfully, why I had no pro competitive justification or business justification for what it's doing. And the court back in in the nineties early two thousands just rushed through a very short hearing on remedy and also
had done some other kind of outlandish procedural things. And they had originally said you have to split essentially the Windows operating system from the application software like Word and Office and that kind of thing. And the Court of Appeals you said, you rushed it, you did some other things wrong. We're only going to prohibit the specific things that you found were you're legal. Not that much changed
in the marketplace. And that's the issue before Judge Meta in Google, not just what did they do wrong and how do you stop it? But how do you deprive them of their unlawful profits from their illegal behavior, and how do you restore competition? And so I know in filibustering you a little bit, but the remedy stuff is absolutely key. And you have Microsoft as a roadmap for how to have a government victory that doesn't change very
much in the marketplace. And I know the government and the court said on their mind to serve deciding the remedy stuff right now.
It does seem like this is another example of the law trying to catch up with the technology a little bit.
You know, ant trust lagation is backward looking. In Europe you have kind of more prospective legislation like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. But here court has judged that they acted unlawfully maintain their monopoly in a way that goes beyond competition on the merits, and you have to stop that. And you don't want the Microsoft situation where the government wins but not really that
much changes. And I know the government has recommended the sale of chrome or otherwise separating kind of the search function from the from the browser, and that's something I hope that court considers very seriously because these behavioral remedies often don't work. The history of Microsoft is a history of really really long periods of time where they're under court supervision. They did most but not all, the things that they were ordered too, and again not much changed.
They had to share lots of technical information so that competitors could better interoperate with him. That's going to be part of this solution here. But when you do structural remedies, it's cleaner, it's more painful for the company. But they're the ones who are helped to break the law. This is not a criminal case. No one's going to jail,
nobody's being fined. The question is what changes in structure and behavior are going to be enough to change the take away the fruits that there unlawful monopoly.
Professor, We're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for your time, and it has been a pleasure.
Well, thank you. I appreciate any our.
Thanks to Professor Spencer Weber Waller. He is director of the Institute of Consumer Anti Trust Studies at Loyal University Chicago School of Law. Up next, we take a look at the block deal between Kruger and Albertson and a few other big ani trust cases in the retail space. You're listening to a special year end edition of Bloomberg Law. I'm Amy Morris and this is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg
Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. This is a special edition of Bloomberg Law as we look at some of the big antitrust cases from this past year. I'm Amy Morris in for June Grosso. Now, we saw several big merger deals blocked, including one that would have created a grocery behemoth. A federal judge blocked Kroger's nearly twenty five billion dollar acquisition of Albertson, saying that proposed tie
up would create a competition problem for shoppers. To take it close to look at the failed deal and the fallout for both grocers, plus a look at some other big cases in the retail space. We welcome Professor Peter Carstenson, Professor of Law Emeritus at University of Wisconsin Law School. Professor, thank you so much for taking the time.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Let's talk about this particular merger. The FTC blocked the deal, arguing that it would violate antitrust law. That was seen as an ft SE win, of course, but then Albertsons sued Kroger. Walk us through how this worked well.
Albertson's got looted before it was sold. They gave up several billion dollars to their shareholders, so they're already impoverished expecting that this deal with Kroger was going to go through.
They now claim that Kroger did not really do the best job it could have in defending and justifying the merger, inadequate proposed divestiture, et cetera, and that that obviously has harmed Albertson's enormously, And so they're seeking huge damages as a way of trying to get some funding back in place to restore themselves as a competitor, even.
Though it was the FTC that blocked it.
Right right well up until this case, the FTC, best of my present recollection, never actually stopped a grocery merger totally. It would say, you've got to give up these grocery stores, or those grocery stores. You proposed to give up one hundred and twenty grocery stores. We want you to give up two hundred and twelve grocery stores. But they let the mergers go through. This time they finally got the courage of my convictions and said, no, well, they've made
a really stupid settlement actually with Albertson's. A few years ago they divested the one hundred and fifty something like that stores to a company that almost immediately went bankrupt, and partly because the stores that were divested were the dogs in part of the of the Safeway empire, so that this time the Trade Commission said, no, we're just not going to approve the merger. There was something like fourteen hundred local markets were Albertson's and Kroger were significant
competitors with each other. They were proposing to fix a significant number of those overlaps, but not all of them. And so this is sort of where the tractory said, that's not an adequate settlement. First of all, this is a clearly any competitive merger in terms of those overlaps, and what you're proposing by way of a settlement simply doesn't solve the problem. Very good opinion by the judge.
By the way, we've seen this year at least four really good decisions, three that I can think of from trial judges, this one, the one in the Google monopoly case, and the.
Tapestry.
All of them the judges did really really good jobs. And the judge said on the settlement was it would reduce the number of markets where there are arms substantially if and only if the company acquiring these assets is actually one hundred percent successful, if it has any failure, there's going to be more markets harmed. And this is a company that in the past has bought grocery stores and then sold them one way or another. So the judge said, this is really not a very good settlement
proposal from Kroger. I'm not going back to Albertsons. I think this is why Albertson's is irritated that Kroger did not come up with a more credible buyer and did not offer more stores by way of a settlement, which made it harder to justify the proposed dissolution of the our se the the M just by the merger because of what was being sold off. U.
Well, so does albertson S d uh have a j a shot at winning this case?
I this gets over into outside really of antitrust law, over into corporate duties. Uh ha, did they fail to engage in good faith? Uh? Advancement of the merger. They're gonna be saying something on more or less along the lines of ours was a really good proposal that judge just didn't accept it. It was as far as we was reasonable to go given how much we were gonna pay for Albertson's or wards to that general effect. And so that's gonna turn it's it's in Delaware, it's in
state court. It's gonna turn on the duties of a buyer to a seller where there are some conditions. And that's my pay grade to speculate. I mean, I would guess if Albertson's has some pretty good evidence, there'll be a settlement. Kroger will pay some more money to Albertson's.
Now, you mentioned Caprian Tapestry earlier in this interview, and that deal wasn't blocked, but they mutually decided to end the agreement after a court order froze them. To walk us through that decision, it sounds like it's not quite as contentious as the Albertson Kroger.
Oh, I think it was at least as contentious. On what's called the market definition. These are high priced purses that are in the popular high price or something like that. And the argument was a purse is a purse, and you can get a purse for twenty dollars at Walmart. You can get a purse from one of these fancy folks for one thousand dollars. I've been seeing some ants recently and I keep asking myself, why would anybody pay
that much for a purse, But it's not me. So again, this was a set they were seeking preliminary injunction as I recall for the Trade Commission so they could proceed. And the question was whether you could distinguish in this purse and other accessories world a domain an an area of competition involving this sort of middle price range from like one hundred dollars to nine hundred dollars for a purses as opposed to purses that were priced one thousand
dollars or under a hundred. And the Trade Commission put in some pretty good evidence of the way in which these two companies had specifically identified themselves as being in that zone of perse competition accessory competition, and it identified each other as being their most major competitor. And so again the argument was under the antitrust law, a merger which may underscy the word may substantially lesson competition or tend to create a monopoly, is unlawful. So it doesn't
have to actually eliminate the harm competition, restrain competition. It simply is something that may is reasonably likely to harm competition, and these two firms identified themselves as each other's primary competitor.
There were other associated facts that really, in the judges view and the Trade Commission's earlier view, really did create this kind of competitive zone where if these firms merged, there really would not be they had four or five different brands as well, there really would not be another other equally significant competitors in that band of person accessory supplies.
The high end producers brand named European outfits would be unlikely to want to cut price to enter that area, and that the low priced people have a very hard time apparently raising their profile, so that if you traditionally saw one of their purses as a ninety eighty or ninety dollars perse, for them to convince you that it's real that a different line but with the same brand name is really a two hundred and fifty dollars person
is apparently a very difficult advertising promotion credibility problem. So that the judge felt that there was good reason to believe that this would this merger would significantly affect competition in that domain.
Well, professor, before I let you go I'm curious about what this could mean for future M and A type deals. We've just talked about two really big ones that got frozen and got dissolved. Does this have a chilling effect on others who may be looking at mergers and acquisitions?
I would so like that to be the case. Most of these mergers of this scale have no legitimate justification in terms of efficiency, product promotion, innovation. I think if the Biden Harris administered had been had been retained by the voters, there was a reasonable probability that this would
have had an inhibiting effect. What is very uncertain is with the new Trump administration, even though the designated heads for the Anti Trust Division and the Trade Commission are actually pretty pro anti trust, how active they will be in enforcing merger law at this level. The certainly the market and the folks who are putting deals together don't
think so. There are a whole lot of deals that are set to come forward after January twentieth, and that would suggest that the market, the investment bankers think that merger rules are going to be relaxed. A number of them were, of course, substantial contributors to the new administration's campaign and to its, the inauguration, etc. And it is allegedly a transactional administration, which would again suggest that they may know something here.
Professor, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for taking the time with us. Our thanks to Professor Peter Carstensen for joining us, Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Now up next, we are going to look ahead to twenty twenty five and preview how another Trump administration could impact the regulatory environment. You're listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Law. I maybe Morris in for June Grosso. This
is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks for listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Law. I'm Abe Morris filling in for June Grosso, and we're focusing on anti trust regulations on this show. President elect Donald Trump ass promised to make some sweeping changes to government at the federal level. He'll inherit a record amount of pending antitrust cases. We get a preview now of how a Trump White House might be handling things.
We bring in Bloomberg News Anti trust reporter Leah Nylan, Leah, a pleasure, thanks for joining us, Thanks for having me Assistant Attorney General for Anti Trust. Jonathan Canter leaving the agency. Got a lot of cases pending. What's happening here?
Yes, So Jonathan Canter has officially gone. For the next couple weeks. His number two at the agency, Doha Mechi, is in charge, and then on January twentieth, somebody from the Trump administration will come in. Donald Trump has nominated Gail Slater to take over the position. She is a long time any trust lawyer with experience at the other agency,
the FTC. For the past couple of years, she has been working at a number of anti Google companies, including Fox Corp and Roku, and she has recently served as the academic advisor to Jade Vance. So she's very familiar with these lawsuits and has, you know, lots of thoughts about how they could go forward. At the Federal Trade Commission, Trump has nominated one of the current GOP commissioners to take the chairmanship from Lena Khan, who is expected to
step down after the inauguration. His name is Andrew Ferguson. He is a former hillstaffer for former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and has also served as the Solicitor General of Virginia. He has also a lot of anti big tech views and has recently spoken about the need to look into the tech platforms over there censorship of conservative viewpoints.
Okay, there's a lot to unpack there, but obviously people are being moved into those positions, are getting positioned to move in come January twentieth, the next administration is going to have to be the ones that pick up the baton and move this forward. From what you know about these nominees, these people who may be taking these positions, is that something that they are inclined to do, or would they go a different direction?
Now, both of them have already sort of made clear that they intend to move forward with these cases that have already been filed, and in his nomination announcements, Donald Trump indicated that he picked them in large part because of their views on tech and so, yes, the Google case is sort of the first one, the biggest one that remains pending at the Justice Department, and there is supposed to be a trial in that one in April over what sort of conditions the courts made place on
the company after it was found to be an illegal monopoly. The Trump administration will have a chance in March to weigh in if they have any views that are slightly
different from the Biden folks. The Biden team put in a proposal for how they think the court should make some changes to Google's business, but as I mentioned, the Trump team can make some changes to that before this trial takes place in April, and then we'll go forward with a several week hearing and the judge has promised to issue a ruling before August of next year.
Now that's Google, but there are also other cases Ticketmaster, Apple, Visa, all accused of illegally dominating markets and the Justice Departments suing them, and plus there's that monopolization suit against Google that you were talking about. Those cases are still are still pending. They don't even have trial dates yet.
Yeah, those are our ones that are all sort of in the early stages. They were filed by the Biden administration in the past year, so they're very early. It's definitely possible that folks from those companies try and persuade the Justice Department to settle with them. That is, you know, something that has happened in a lot of previous administrations.
People often point back to the Microsoft case, which was started by the Clinton administration, and then after George W. Bush came in in twenty eleven, his administration opted to settle with the company. So it's pretty much guaranteed that the companies will at least make attempts to settle. Whether Slater and the Trump team are interested in the settlement sort of remains to be seen, but you know, they might be interested in seeing what the companies might be willing.
To offer up. The Trump administration is known for being a friend of big companies, big tech, and I wonder if that is going to play a role in how he makes his decisions as to whether to move the towards the anti trust type cases that are already pending. It just there's a question as to whether would he move forward with them.
Yeah, that's that's definitely ago question. You know, some of the CEOs of the companies have already sort of made overtures towards President Trump. You know, Mark Zuckerberg donated a lot of money to Trump's inauguration fund. Tim Cook went down to mar A Lago and had dinner with Donald Trump, and afterwards Trump announced that any sort of trade sanctions that are imposed on Chinese companies would not apply to Apple.
So it's definitely possible that there is going to be like this lobbying pushed to try and persuade Donald Trump to settle some of these cases. So that's sort of why they're all a little bit up in the air for you know, the next couple months. I mean, the thing about some of these cases, like the Chicken Master case for example, is they are like very unpopular with the public. So if he were to sort of settle that case, it's not going to make him a lot
of friends with the average voter. But then again, he might not care.
I see, So where do you since you've been covering this and you are the anti stress reporter for Bloomberg News, where do you see this headed now? And how long does it take to unravel these types of cases?
Yeah, if you know, they do opt to take any kind of a settlement, we could see that by next summer. You know, they're they're not just going to drop them. Probably they would want something in exchange either. That's some kind of settlement where the company agrees to change some of its business practices, maybe pay a little bit of money. It sort of depends, you know, in the Microsoft case that everyone keeps putting back to you because it's our
sort of best example. You know, Microsoft agreed to be under government supervision for the next five years. That ended up turning into like a decade long saga. So right, you know, right, people they want.
It takes such a long time to unravel all of this, And also there may be more coming down the pipe.
Yes, that's certainly true. There are still a number of cases that both the FTC and the dj have been investigating into large companies for the past several years, some of the health insurance companies, meat packers, all sorts of stuff in the sort of pharmaceutical and the pharmaceutical benefit manufacturers, the drug middleman area. So I mean, we could see
more lawsuits, you know, coming in the next year. All of this sort of depends on how the Trump administration really wants to play this issue.
And that's kind of a mystery at this point.
It still is a little bit of a mystery.
Because none of us have a crystal ball.
Definitely true. Someone wants to described Donald Trump's sort of method to me as saying like he doesn't get involved in like the policy details. He tends to delegate decision making to a person that he trusts, and that person is sort of allowed to run with it until sometimes something big happens, and then he oftentimes wants to get
back involved. So if you think about the way that the sort of TikTok band played out, you know, they were looking at banning TikTok and that was moving along until there was then like sort of the auctioning process where people were involved, and Donald Trump wanted to be very involved in that because he likes sort of making deals and negotiating with companies in them himself.
Where do you anticipate coming up in twenty twenty five as far as any more antitrust cases that may be coming down the pipe.
Yeah, So, in addition to the Google case, we already mentioned, the FTC's big case against Facebook, which is over whether Facebook should be forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp, is scheduled to go to trial starting also in April for about ten weeks. That one should be very interesting.
Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and some other very senior Facebook executives are set to testify and it is really about sort of fixing what a lot of the antitrust people think is like one of the seminal mistakes of the Internet generation, which was allowing you know, Facebook to acquire Instagram. So it will be interesting to see what the court
does there. It's that one is sort of at the point where it's it would be difficult for the Trump administration to roll it back because it's already sort of slated to had to trial very soon. But some of the other ones that are pending, as we mentioned, the Apple case, the Amazon case, those are sort of ones that might potentially see settlements.
Interesting that they're mostly big tech.
Yes, you know. This all started towards the end of the first Trump administration in twenty nineteen, the DOJ and the FTC did this big divide where they decided that the Justice Department would look into Google and Apple and the FTC would look into Facebook and Amazon, and right at the very end of the Trump administration, they sued both Google and Facebook, and then they sort of turned their attention to the other tech giants, Apple and Amazon
and ended up bringing cases against them in twenty twenty three and then earlier this year. But though that has taken a lot of agency resources, because you know, these are not that's large agencies. They only have about like eight hundred to twelve hundred people. And when you're talking about some of the largest companies in the world, it certainly takes a lot of resources to go up against them. So they have these major cases and sort of the outcome is still very much in doubt.
Andy.
Trust cases also tend to take a very long time. So even though the cases we're originally the Google and Facebook cases were filed in twenty twenty, we're still here in twenty twenty four going into twenty twenty five, and we don't have them resolved. So I wouldn't I wouldn't expect a quick resolution to anything. Really.
Wow, but it's going to be very interesting to watch, that's certainly true. We're gonna watch it right along with you.
Keeps me employed, so I don't mind too much.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that either. Well, let's shift gears for a second and move to the FTC. You had mentioned that Donald Trump has already got somebody in line ready to take over and to move into the one of the FTC positions. There's been a lot of there have been a lot of questions about one of the roles of the FTC. They had tried to do the non compete clause, you know, put a ban on
the non compete clause that got squashed. Where is that going to be going now under a Trump administration.
Yeah, So the chair of the FTC right now is Lena Khan. She is expected to step down once Trump is inaugurated, sort of to open up the space for him to nominate a third Republican so that they have a majority. But that oftentimes that process takes several months. So as soon as she leaves, the agency is going
to be deadlocked two to two. Because they have two Republicans and two Democrats in office right now, that sort of prevents any like really major shifts because you know, if the agency, for example, wanted to withdraw any of these rules, it can't do it without a vote. But these proposals are probably going to end up being pulled back. Both of the Republicans who are on the commission right now voted against nearly all of the rules that have
been put in place, including the noncompete piany. One of the Republicans voted in favor of the more recent junk few rules so that one might be able to stay, but some of the major ones are probably going to be pulled back, though not until they have their third Republican in place later in the year. That third Republican is has been nominated as Mark Metter. He is the longtime chat staffer for Senator Mike Lee. Very well known
in anti trust circles. He has made a name for himself representing some of the conservative platforms in cases that they've brought against the tech platforms, including Rumble, which has sued Google over some of the alleged d platforming that has taken place. That's when they're removed from app stores and things like that. So that is probably going to be like a major focus of the next FTC.
Or Thanks to Leah Nylan. Thank you Leah for taking the time, Thank you for having me. She covers antitrust for Bloomberg News, and thank you for joining us on this special edition of Bloomberg Law. I'm Abe Morris and for June Grosso. Stay with us. Today's top stories in global business. Headlines are coming up right now.