Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every day we bring you insight and analysis into the most important legal news of the day. You can find more episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Facebook just inked a record five billion dollars settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations, but the FTC is apparently not done with the social networking giant. The agency is now
investigating with their Facebook violated antitrust laws. Joining me is leading antitrust expert Harry First, Professor at n y U Law School. Harry, isn't it at all unusual to have the FTC concluding one investigation on a company and then starting another, Well, it's not necessarily unusual, and they're two actually very separate cases. The settlements that they just reached was for violating a twenty twelve order Facebook agreed to with the FTC, and there was an order that revolved
around privacy issues, not around competition issues. So they're really actually quite separate. If if we had two separate agencies, one for privacy, one for competition, and then you'd have a different name on the door, so I don't find anything unexpected actually in the FTC finishing one and also doing another, so two agencies. That brings up my next question. How does this FTC investigation fit in with the Justice Department's Antitrust Division escalating it's scrutiny into tech giants like
Facebook and Google. Well, that is a wonderful question, which it may be that people at the FTC are asking it as well. Uh, and I don't know how they've resolved it. I find this actually surprising and a little troubling. Originally, there have been reports that Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department any Trust Division, both of which have jurisdiction and legally they can actually investigate the same party. They can actually bring cases separately against the same party for
the same behavior, but they haven't done that. So they try to coordinate efforts, which is sensible. And originally it looked like they were dividing up the big tech four, where the FTC would have jurisdiction over Facebook and Amazon and the Justice Department over Google and Apple. But now it looks like something has happened, and I don't quite know what, but the Justice Department's press release, which in itself is an unusual thing to do in any trust cases,
to say, oh, guess what we are investigating. Usually, if you're investigating, you start investigating, you don't issue a press release. So why did they do it? And it does appear that they're going to investigate all four of these companies? So this creates a risk between the two agencies, which frankly has been going on now currently for a little while.
How much pressure is there on the antitrust enforces to bring cases against the tech companies, not only because you have President Trump who has expressed an interest in that, but also you have so many people calling for their breakup. So there are two levels to this. One is the very interesting policy level that there seems to be a concern across the political spectrum with the power that these
four companies now seem to be exercising. They are ubiquitous in our lives, and generally we we expect some controls on very big companies. It's either the government of controls or the markets, and neither's doing it. So on a policy level, this is I think a good development, maybe a little surprising. The federal government has an investigated monopolies for two decades since the Microsoft case. Really, so in
that sense it's a good thing. The other part of it is what are the politics for the Justice Department, and that it's a little hard to pull apart and perhaps not all that good and related more to political vendetta than to any trust policy. I don't know that for sure, but I read the tweets as you do and as everyone does, and it is a little concerning. And it seems to me that any trust people have avoided that and tried to keep this as a matter
of law. But I worry with this most recent announcement by General Barr that that line is fading on these very big companies. They're also big. What would make the difference between bringing a case and not bringing a case against one of them? Well, they really do have to investigate and find out exactly how these companies are put
together in what they've done. So these investigations take time, and with big companies like this, have to look into a lot and they want to see whether they've engaged in behavior basically that's excluded their competitors and or raised price to consumers. So that's what they'll be looking for. Should take time, and they've got to work this into
a good legal theory. Let's turn for a moment to the news of the day, because something seems to be happening in anti trust all the time lately, isn't it's certainly the in area now, So you're teaching the right all my students, Right. The Justice Department has approved T Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. It's a deal that's going to reshape the wireless industry. It combines the number three and the number four wireless carriers in the country was rejected
under the Obama administration. Do the remedies the Justice Department has put in place take care of antitrust concerns? Well, this is going to be a key question going forward, although maybe not the only question. It's always difficult to create a new competitor out of some other company, and that seems to be what the Justice Department is trying to do. Um We see it often in merger cases, and most of the time this fails. So I think people are going to be looking skeptically at exactly what's
been created. Four to three merger is generally your instinct is that's really a lot less competition. So are you really going to create a four firm industry now by throwing some assets at a different company and hoping it will work. So I think there's gonna be some skepticism about whether this deal is really effective in maintaining competition in this industry. There's a lawsuit by a group of states that say the deal should be blocked. Is that
a big obstacle? Still, it is a legal obstacle. Yes, that's litigation, which my understanding is will continue. And again this is another example of tension in the relationship between the Justice Department and other anti trust enforcers. First, it's the FTC. This case, it's the states. These states are pretty serious about this case, actually put a lot of work into it, and I think they'll seriously examine whether this is a genuine remedy or whether still we would
predict that competition may be lessened in the future. And that's the question the law requires courts to answer. That's Harry First, a professor at n y U Law School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso, This is Bloomberg,