Trump’s Win and Its Industry Impacts

This podcast series examines the intersection of business policy and law. I'm Elliott Stein, an analysts with Bloomberg Intelligence covering financials litigation. The Forthcoming Conversation was a post election webinar that our Bloomberg Intelligence policy analysts hosted on November sean to discuss the industry impacts of the November fifth US elections, which saw Donald Trump win the presidency and Republicans take control

of the Senate. The House of Representatives has yet to be called as of this recording, but various new sources point to a likely slim Republican majority. I was joined by my colleagues Nathan Dean, Jenrie, Matt Schattenhelm, Holly from Justin TERESI Rob Barnett, Andrews Silverman, and Ben Elliott. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

by my bi policy analyst colleagues. We have several on the line here, so let me just introduce them quickly. We have Nathan Dean who covers financials policy, Ben Elliott, who covers Fannie May and Freddie Mack and the card lenders. Holly from who covers consumer and industrials policy and litigation. Justin Teresi and Jen Ree who cover antitrust policy in litigation. Andrews Silverman who covers tax policy, Rob Barnett who covers renewables,

and Matt Chettenhelm who covers TMT litigation and policy. So we have a lot of sectors and issues to cover today. So I'm going to stop my introductory remarks here and we'll start going around the horn to hear from all of my colleagues on this call. We're going to start with Holly from who, like I said, covers policy and litigation in the consumer sector as well as the industrial sector, since the imposition of tariffs is likely to be one of the first things we see President Trump do when

he takes office. So, Hollie, what why don't you come in tell us what you are thinking and seeing and expecting in terms of tarriffs and other issues in the consumer and industrial sectors.

his economic plan. He said he would impose terris of sixty percent on goods from China, and we think that could impact apparel companies like Nike and Adidas, who source fourteen to eighteen percent of their footwear from China according to BI estimates, and perhaps auto companies too, like Bolo and full Stars and some of their evs are meeting China.

Trump has also pledged tariffs at a rate of ten to twenty percent on goods from everywhere else, and we think that could impact a peril companies like Lululemon and All Birds, given they largely make products in Vietnam. Opponents have said Trump's tariffs could drive up per household costs by over two thousand dollars a year. So does Trump have the power to do that this The short answer

we think is yes, very such. He'd delegate congressional authority to the president to impose tariffs when, for example, they are necessary to tech national security, to prevent appreciation of the dollar, or when a foreign countries practices deny US rights under trade agreements or burning US commerce. This last section refers to powers granted to the president under section three oh one of the Trade Acts. President Trump used this power in twenty eighteen to impose terror some five

hundred billion dollars worth of goods. Multiple companies challenge these actions in the US Court of International Trade, which never ruled on the case because the Biden administigation took over and the case was rendered moot. But we think that those challenges were her, the court would have held them, and this is because courts have read terror powers very broadly. In fact, we have them openated a single case in which a court invalidated the president's imposition terror under this section.

So that is why we think this judicial challenge will fail. With regard to electric vehicle policies, we think there's a strong chance that tax credits granted in the Inflation Reduction Act to purchasers of eed vehicles in the amount of seven thousand, five hundred for new vehicles and four thousand dollars for used vehicles use DV vehicles could be scaled

back now that President Trump has been re elected. We also continued to try to scale back Biden administration EPA rules that required more stringent emission limits on light and medium d vehicles. While on the campaign trail, Trump pledged to eliminate a so called eb mandate, and when he was president, he attempted to scale back Obama EPA mission rules.

The elimination these credits and potential revision to EPA rules could benefit traditional automakers like Ford and Toyota, who have blessed EV penetration, and we think it could hurt ev companies and companies that provide charging our grid infrastructure for eeds like Sensada to connectivity and Eton. The final thing we expect may happen during Trump's administration relate to pe p fasts were so called forever chemicals are chemicals that have been found in the drinking water and have been

linked to serious, diverse health effects. The Biden administration ep and March promulgated rules that would make two of the most widely studied and harmful prefast hazardous hazardous substances under super Fund rules and would set maximum contaminant levels or MCLs and drinking water, and the EPA is set those levels in drinking water at four parts per trillion, which

is the lowest level that analytical equipment can detect. Industry stakeholders have fought back against this level, saying it doesn't make economic sense, it's not necessary to protect health, and

it's absorbitantly expensive. While in office, Trump had a p Fast action plan in which he intended to set MCLs and designate the substances hazardous, but that never came to fruition during his administration, and that Trump administration opposed a prior version of the Pfast Action Act, which would have done the same thing as the rules that would have set limits and designate the substance hazardous. Trump said he'd probably detailed that legislation because the costs out the benefits.

This is the same argument some industry stakeholders are making with respect to the MCL level or four parts per trillion, So we think the level will keep us. The four parts patrillion may be revisited by Trump's EPA, and if so, there may be less us too many factors like random which has been subject to lawsuits for alleged contamination, and other industries like waste companies who may be required to immediate or maybe themed responsible parties under super farm laws.

And so with that Elliott alternative, back to you.

it had pulled back about twenty percent. Currently it's down about nine percent versus where it was pre market, and so it's kind of climbed back a little bit from that initial reaction following some information about the election results.

And I think, you know, this sort of vibe, you know, why did these companies react the way they did really comes down to views one, what could potentially happen, I think, to the Inflation Reduction Act under a second Trump administration and Republican controlled Senate and possibly the House too, and so you know, I think the question is, you know, what's what's how is this actually going to play out?

You know, Holly just mentioned a perspective that that maybe some of the ev tax credits go away, and I think when you look at the wind in solar space, it's it's probably not quite as high of a probability

of an outright repeal of some of those subsidies. And I'll try to tackle a few of the big ones, so you know, we we've talked quite a bit in the in some of these calls previously, so the idea of a full IRA repeal, I think we kind of handicap at say ten percent, and other other folks on this call can probably more eloquently speak to sort of why that is the case. But then you go through and sort of say, well, look, maybe individual pieces do get dismantled or scaled down or are phased out earlier,

however you want to think about it. And so in the win in solar space, there's I think three buckets that I pay the most close attention to. So you've got the PTC Production Tax Credit, You've got the ITC, the Investment Tax Credit, and I think the way you should think about both of those is that they're the ones that are kind of driving demand for solar and wind.

forty five x tax credit. So if it were to go away, it's it's a pretty serious impact on the company. And I think that our view is that there's probably a fair amount of quiet support for that staying in place. And I'll try to articulate why that is true. So even though this was the Inflation Reduction Act was a Bidenarrow policy, it's sort of magical or interesting that most of the companies that appear to be really leveraging it and benefiting it built their facilities in fairly red states.

So you see a lot of construction of solar module manufacturing capacity and states like Georgia, UH, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and and and if you're kind of familiar with how these how these projects came to fruition, there's a lot of courtship with the governors of those states saying, oh, come come to our state, build built your factory here.

And so I think there's probably a lot of quiet support saying hey to from governors and state lawmakers saying hey, look, it's okay to be philosophically opposed to win in solar, but hey, this. These companies have built factories in my state and my district that is employing folks in my state, So you know, don't don't get rid of the forty five X credit is something I think you're going to sort of quietly hear, and I doubt we're ever going to see forty five X really discussed much in headlines

or it's it's this boring wonky name. And my sense is that you know, there's there's a decent chance that this survives a second term administration. And let me just say that even if it doesn't, I would still make the argument that wind and solar has a fairly bright future in the United States, and that is because federal policy is not the only thing driving outcomes in the space.

California many other states have very ambitious policies aimed at reducing emissions transforming the electric generation components within their state, and they don't care who the president is or what the federal policy is. And so I think you're going to see very strong continued support for wind and solar at the local level, at the state level, depending on the state. And I also think you're going to see

a continued evolution of the economics for the technology. At the end of the day, win and solar have gotten fairly cheap. That's why they're being so aggressively installed in so many different locations. And so I think at the end of the day, we're going to see continued growth for wind under President trump second administration. We're going to see continued growth for solar on their second administration. Maybe some of the subsidies get modified or tweaked, but it's

probably not a sea change for the industry. So that's my broad, high level conclusions. And for anyone listening, if you want to talk shop or go into any more detail on any of these companies or segments, I'm happy to chat with you about it offline. So thanks a lot, Eliott, Great, thanks a lot.

delayed for now. Reason being is is that while the FED will keep their leadership individuals through twenty twenty six, this is the chairman Drome Poll and advice chair Michael Barr, the OCC acting chair Michael Sue most likely le on day one, and the FDIC will most likely flip to a republican control.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council had been talking about systemic risk of asset managers. We don't think that's really much of a risk anymore. We don't think that the future f SoC is going to take any steps there. I would say, though, is that this idea of private credit is still something that I think a Republican administration via

their regulators will certainly look at. If you have bank lobbyists whispering into the regulatory ears, hey don't look at us, look at our friends up in Connecticut, I at least think the question is going to be asked, and so you know, we'll see scrutiny of hedge funds and private equity funds in private credit, but more questions than actual tangible proposals or regulations at this point. So you know,

over at the SEC this is where cryptocurrency comes in. Now, we do think a cryptocurrency framework is going to happen next year. Via Congress, President Trump vowed to be the crypto capital, or vow of the United States to be the crypto capital of the world. But just remember this does come from Congress. So we do think a crypto framework can pass next year. I don't think the stable coin bill that people are taught talking about and Lane

Duck is going to happen. I think this is just my own personal belief that I think the Lame Duck is not going to be as active due to the victory of the Republicans. I think they may just say, hey, let's pick up our toys and play next year.

over at the CFTC. That's really like the Republicans will come in and dramatically change and so forth like that. And then the last thing I want to talk about is consumer finance, and this is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So these are essentially non bank consumer firms, ranging from mortgage lenders to credit unions, to you know, to payday lenders, debt collectors, and so forth, even some of Matt Schttenhelm's

technology companies that he talks about. So what you should know about the CFPB is that there's a lot of rumors and a lot of thoughts. And if you read Project twenty twenty five, you may have seen language that President Trump needs to essentially gut the agency and abolish

the agency. We don't think that's going to happen. What we think is going to happen is you're going to see a very similar playbook to what you did in the first Trump administration when former cd CFPB director Kathy Cranager came in and essentially scaled up a deregulatory effort, but at the same time still keeping up examination authority and examination interests. So I think that's what the CFPB is most likely going to be going forward. Rohee Chopra,

if he doesn't leave, will be most like fired. But then I think if you're on the examination side, or the compliance side, or the risk side, CFPB still is going to be something that you got to deal with. You're probably just not going to see a dramatic number of regulations coming out.

struck down by the Supreme Court last term. So I agree with you that you know, any attacks on the agency are going to be a little more target and not sort of wholesale trying to eliminate the agency completely. This is a good pivot. Talking about consumer finance to Ben Elliott, who, in addition to covering card lenders, covers Fannie May and Freddie Mac, two companies who's preferred stock at least yesterday also went up somewhere to the increases we saw in bank stock prices. Ben, why don't you

come in talk to us about Fanny and Freddie. Lotta chatter on Twitter and elsewhere about you know, whether those companies are finally going to get out of conservatorship or not.

But as The Wall Street Journal reported last September, some of the former Trump administration officials that were intimately involved in the prior administration have really been sort of stewing on this ever since they left office, So it's possible this time around they can get a much quicker start off the line and actually move the process much further along. The problem is that this remains of a market's driven story. Recap and release is the name of sort of the concept,

and really the recap portion is the challenging part. So the companies are going to need to raise probably at least one hundred billion dollars in new capital. That sort of goalpost can be moved by the Trump administration in order to sort of speed the process along.

phase process where they raise capital and several tranches. There might, for instance, be a conversion of the junior preferreds into common equity as sort of a first stage, because those investors already have skin in the game. Then there might be a rights offering for existing shareholders or sort of an early IPO, and that could increase the capitalization level of the companies in a way that allows them to

pursue a much larger, broader IPO. Ultimately, it's going to rely on market conditions and the housing market which the Trump administration is now going to preside over in many different ways, which will affect Fanning Fordy's cash flows and therefore their valuation and return on equity metrics, which will

be key to raising additional private capital. So if mortgage volumes were to slow down, right, if tariffs were to drive up inflation which required interest rates to rise again, that could be a substantial delay to the process if credit were to worsen, charge offs, modifications, foreclosures, or to come back. It's also could be a major drag on

Fanny Freddy earnings, which could slow the process. So basically, if they were to start, you know, day one, the market remains benign, they attract a bunch of private capital. It's probably a twenty twenty six or twenty twenty seven prospect of the best and between now and then, there's a lot of room for these different securities to trade up and down with sort of wins and delays and whatnot. But it's really not done until the private capital starts to come in. So a couple of things we'll be

watching here in the short term. First, Trump has got to pick a Treasury secretary. That person needs to be amenable to releasing the enterprises and confirmable by the Senate. So one of the big sort of sticking points here is that Treasury owns something called the senior Preferred stock, which has what's called a liquidation preference in government parlance, which basically says the Treasury still owed three hundred and forty one billion dollars, that money has to sort of

come out of nowhere. If you do any sort of basic deal math, you come to the conclusion that that has to be crammed down. That's been a long time sticking point for Treasury officials. There are a lot of career Treasury officials and lawyers who view that as problematic for ourcane reasons. So they needed a Treasury secretary who's

really deal oriented, willing to get creative. Probably Trump's last Treasury secretary was actually a little bit more moderate and didn't really take any sort of the drastic steps that we had anticipated they might attempt to take, and some of that might be necessary this time around. And then secondly, Trump is going to pick an FHFA director who's the regulator of Fanny and Freddie and sort of the other

signatory to the agreements that govern their conservatorship. That person it's a bit of a challenge because Republicans are picking from a pool of conservative housing academics and policymakers who historically are not pro Fanny and Freddy, And to get the transaction across the finish line, you kind of need to be pro Fanny and Freddy because you're asking people to put in tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of additional private capital, so the companies need to have

a sustained return. And then the sort of a final issue is you can't just release the enterprises with no government backstop, because that would likely lead to a credit downgrade from the credit ratings agencies, which would be catastrophic essentially for agency nbs markets because people who buy agency nbs are buying them because of their credit rating and they're implicit backing from the US government. So there's going to need to be a pay for for that, which

could also be a complicating factor. So once those two agencies are staffed up and then get started on this, there's plenty of of sort of procedural hurdles to surpass. You know, Trump administration wants to get this done, and so we're going to be following it closely and and we welcome any any questions or feedback from anyone who's more interested in some of the MINUTII that I'll hand it back to you, Elliott.

director on day one and nominate whoever they want. The last time around, there was a removal restriction on removing the FHFA directors, so they had to wait for mel Watt to leave. Essentially, so it took a couple of years before they could actually get going on all their plans to privatize the companies. All right, let's pivot to some cross sector issues. Let's talk tax and bring in our taxman, Andrew Silverman. Andrew, the House hasn't been called yet,

looks like it's going to go Republican. You know how important is that to the things you're looking at.

trillion dollars. And then, of course, on the other hand, Donald Trump on the campaign trail was talking about a whole slew of tax cuts, tax exemptions for Social Security, overtime pay and tips, intratroductions for auto loan payments, fifteen percent corporate tax rate for domestic manufacturing, getting rid of the state local tax deduction cap of ten thousand dollars, and a slew of other proposals. In fact, I was

just thinking about this morning. He even went on Joe Rogan and said he was going to get rid of the income tax completely. But the Committee for a Responsible Thorough Budget says that, as I said, you know, making the TCGA permanent would cost six trillion dollars, but if you add everything else that he wants to do into that equation, it could cost as much as sixteen trillion dollars.

And to put that into perspective, the government spent six point seventy five trillion dollars in all of fiscal twenty twenty four, which ended at the end of September. So could Congress to everything that Trump has promised tax wise.

I think the simple answer to that question is no, why not because Republicans don't have sixty seats in the Senate, And as Nathan and I like to talk about, without sixty seats in the Senate, that means they have to use budget reconciliation in order to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent or to do any of the other things that Trump has promised to do. And let me put in a bid here for a future webinar focusing just on reconciliation because it is such a pleasure

to discuss. But if Republicans have to use reconciliation, then Congress has to adopt its tax proposals on a budget neutral basis. And the amount of revenue that the government collected in fiscal twenty twenty four was four point five trillion dollars. But keep in mind that budget neutrality is generally speaking, subjective, and what I mean by that is that economic growth can be taken into account when we

talk about budget neutrality. So the Congradual Budget Office can say, sure, we're going to collect fifty trillion dollars in tax revenue over a decade, But gosh, these tax policies they're going to stimulate the heck out of the economy so much that GDP is going to increase and fifty trillion dollars, it's actually going to be fifty five trillion dollars. And

that's all and good. But even if we squint with our rose colored glasses on, I just don't believe that the CBO can find a way for everything that Trump has promised to come to pass. And so that means one of three things, or three of three things. Trump doesn't get everything he's campaigned on. Cutbacks have to be made, or the Republicans will have to introduce new taxes, or like I said, all three of them. But I want to be completely straight with you here. Trump is not

going to get everything that he campaigned on. Politicians campaign and poetry that governed in pros or put another way, they can sometimes stretch the truth on a campaign trail. I know that's shocking and disturbing to hear, but that's how it is. So tax exemptions on Social Security tipping it over to I'm not going to happen. In my view.

Maybe Congress does some of these things to a small extent, but certainly not as Trump has described them, and in terms of cutbacks, obviously, the Inflation Duction Act is going to be the Republican's main target because it was adopted

without Republican support. Yet, as we've pointed out in the past and even in our discussion today, Rob eloquently putting out all of the ways that Republicans like clean energy, the IRA is almost certainly not going to go away entirely, and we can probably do an entire webinar on that as well, But it'll be tough for Republicans, I think, to repeal the IRA and the buyback tax and the corporate minimum tax and the state and local tax cap. To be honest, not super optimistic about it, and I'm

sorry to say. And lastly, the you know, the third leg of the stool here, would Republicans adopt you taxes? Well, we have to see how big Republicans appetite for the TCJA and Trump's other promises. Is a chairman of the Ways Means Committee, Jason Smith, who's almost certainly going to stay in place next term if the Republicans keep the House, has said that everything is on the table, including corporate

tax increases. But at the same time, Ronald Reagan's great tax reform in nineteen eighty six was accomplished in large part by closing loopholes. But sixteen trillion dollars of loopholes, I'm not convinced that they exist. So, Elliott, exciting days are ahead. Can you feel it? Big tax changes, they're on the way, They're big, They're gonna be big, huge, huge.

at DOJ. There will be a new Attorney General, and I think Jonathan Canter, who's been the chief of the Anti Trust division there, probably resigns sometime before the new administration comes in. And Jonathan Cant, as you might remember, really was influential in bringing cases against Google's ad tech stack over the last few years, recently against Visa related to its debit card practices. So certainly big cases brought

by DJ under Canter. What we've really seen in the last couple of days and the time leading up to the election is an enormous amount of interest and what will ultimately be the fate of FTUC.

a replacement is confirmed by the Senate. So we're looking at it several months here, possibly of Chair Con staying on before we have someone else that's appointed to that slot. So first Trump can very quickly elevate republished Republican Commissioners Holyoke or Ferguson to the chair spot once he takes office, and we think, you know, very likely to do that.

And while they might result in some rather expedient and change the FDC's agenda, it's still the case that there has to be a majority vote at the Commission to take any new actions like bringing lawsuits. The commission itself, it has kind of this three two structure where there's three members of one party, two from another by log inner under the statute, so there can't be more than

three members of any one political party. And right now the Commission has three two democratic control while Lena Khan is there. So we don't think that's a situation with three two democratic control that a President Trump would be likely to uphold. And we think that's the case no matter how much support shir Khan might be receiving from folks like Vice President elect jd Vance or more conservative folks in the Senate who have a voice support for Khan,

like Senator Josh Holly from Missouri. So we think, really, when's the day here is that partisan split that we're going to want to go back to Republican control and questions of loyalty not you know, it certainly is the case that I think President Trump has expressed that views of folks that were appointed in the first term, loyalty

questions arose. And I think especially in the case of independent commission like the FTC, where actions can be taken without that handholding from the White House, many times all the more reason we think President.

we think that also the timing on this. In a world where there might have been divided control between the White House and a Senate, we might see nominations taking a bit of a delay until a time when both the Republican and Democratic seat was up to be filled. But here where there really is that that situation where there's going to be very little pushback, if any, we think we could see a replacement for shar Con put

forward as soon as you know, January or February. The Senate will take the time it does for that approvals process, but we think that happens before and probably separate apart from waiting until Commissioner Holyoaks term ends later on next year. And just speaking of the Senate itself, one more point to make with Republican control, you know, of the Senate, we think broad and sweeping kind of anti trust legislation. We'll see what happens, but unlikely to move right now

to the next Congress. We'll see how the House ultimately shakes up, but probably not a big factor in anything moving. And you know that there really could be some industry specific actions that are taken if there's bipartisan support from them, but separate apart from that, nothing too broader and coming down the pike here, But that'll head it over to Jen to talk a little bit more about some specific impaction might see on antitrust.

And then We also have a lot of merger enforcement at the moment, and we've had it ever since, you know, Biden became the president. So first time we talk about the impact here on M and A, you know, Andrew talked about big tax changes. Well, we're going to have big merger changes. And I think it's definitely going to

become easier for companies to merge. So, but I do want to say, I feel like there's been, you know, kind of an attitude that we're just going to go back to the way things were five ten years ago, any anti trust with respect to mergers, and I don't

really think that's going to happen. You know, we had a movement that started about ten years ago but really took hold about four or five years ago in which there was just a very different philosophy about consolidation in markets and in particular and this kind of started during Trump. Trump's at first administration, but in particular Biden's enforcers are very anti consolidation. They've worked really hard to try to block deals, and they've made it much more difficult to settle.

It used to be most mergers that actually raised dainty trust problems would settle with remedies behavioral or some sort of structural remedy, and these regulators just refused to do that. Essentially, they've settled a few, but for the most part, they don't. And the other thing that they did is they revised merger guidelines at the end of twenty twenty three that they used to assess a merger. And what those guidelines do is essentially lay out what makes a merger presumed harmful.

And that helps them in court because they walk in based on those guidelines with the presumption. And in those guidelines they lowered the thresholds for illegality. Means more deals that are proposed to them get ensnared and are considered potentially harmful. So, first of all, the reason I think there will be a change here is because those two things I just mentioned I think are going to change. First, I think we're going to see new enforcers that are

willing to settle deals. They're not just going to go after every single problematic deal in court. I think they're going to be more willing to listen to these companies offers in terms of their remedies, and also more open to claims that some of these deals may have pro competitive efficiencies and should be allowed to go forward on

the basis of those efficiencies. And the second thing is we really know already that they're going to revise those guidelines I just talked about, because the two Republican FTC commissioners today have both said recently in speeches that they will either revise and one actually said riscind the guidelines. And to me, you know, they didn't go elaborate on that, but to me, that means that they're going to go back up to higher thresholds so that those guidelines catch

fewer mergers, call at the outset fewer mergers as actually problematic. Now, the one thing I do want to say, though, that I think can be a little bit difficult for merging parties and for businesses is that I do think despite certain areas getting easier, that we are going to have some uncertainty. And that is always difficult, you know, to not really know how your deal is going to be approached by the regulators when you sign up for it,

sign it is difficult. And I'd say that because I think anti trust enforcement of mergers in the first Trump administration was really idiosyncratic, meaning rather than really thinking about does this deal violate the intertrust laws or not. There was maybe a little bit more focus on do I like the deal, do I like the companies doing the deal? Or do I not like the companies that are doing the deal and want to try to punish them. That is idiosyncratic. It's a radic It creates on predictability. I

think we saw that in his first term. I think we're going to see that again. So really quickly, let me move over to the big tech lawsuits. So what we have right now are two Department of Justice lawsuits against Google, one over search and one targeted to its ad tech products. We have a Department of Justice laws suit against Apple, one against Live Nation, a Federal Trade Commission suit against Meta, and one against Amazon, all of them for a lleged monopolistic conduct and the way these

companies do their business. I have seen a lot of news saying, oh, now that Trump won the presidency, there's a lot less likelihood that Google will be broken up. The reason that's an issue is because in the search suit, a judge already decided that Google had engaged in a legal conduct. And now what they're trying to figure out are what the proper remedy should be, and the Department of Justice has asked about has talked about asking for

a breakup. We think the concept because Trump was elected makes a breakup less likely is kind of neither here nor there. We have never thought that a breakup was likely to begin with. It is a judge that would order that as the remedy, and we don't think it lines up at all with the Search case, and we felt it was very unlikely that that would have been ordered by a judge. This will be next year that

the order comes out in the Search case. And likewise, we also think even though there's no liability ruling yet in the ad Tech case, which has had its trial, we don't think a breakup is likely there either. None of the other suits are advanced enough to really understand whether the dj will even seek something like that, so will probably not broken up no matter who would won the presidency. On the other suits, I do see a higher chance of some settlement down the road, not in

the near term. You know, a couple of these are really new US versus Apple Amazon very much beginning stages. They have a lot of litigation ahead of them, and I do think those two cases, I just mentioned USB Apple FTCV Amazon are probably the weakest of all of these cases, and so I could see the possibility that Trump's enforcers down the road might be willing to accept

a settlement. I believe Amazon has tried hard to settle with the current FTC in the lawsuit that's against them, and they haven't been able to So that's one possibility. But again I think down the road. And with that back to you, Elliott.

obviously not the antitrust stuff. Why don't you come in and tell us what you're looking for the next few years.

not been able to achieve. Uh She was pushing ahead with a surveillance advertising you know rules that I think they had.

And that's the liability shield that that that keeps people from suing these companies over all the stuff that's put on the Internet, and and there's a strong push to limit that liability shield. And with Republicans in control. I think that's going to become a more vocal force. And I think we saw a Trump executive order. The first time around, we saw an FCC rulemaking that didn't quite get off the ground on it. I think things advanced

further this time in that direction. And so both an FCC rule making potential Supreme Court case and the Court being pushed to narrow the liability shield itself, and so that could lead to significant new liability for the company, much larger settlements of lawsuits. One last thing on Internet Company's TikTok. President Trumps has since come out in you know, against a ban of TikTok, and that kind of makes maybe gives the company a little hope in what's looking

like a pretty dark situation. Congress passed an effective ban of the company last year. It's set to take effect in seventy three days or something. And so the question is does President Trump have the power to reverse that.

band would fade. I don't think TikTok's going to win that legal case though, so I think that that means that Trump's only option may be saying, look, okay, Congress, you passed this law, I'm not going to enforce it. Well, I'm going to tell my Department of Justice to ignore it. That's kind of strange, you know, that's not typically the way things work, But you can't rule it out entirely with President Trump, I guess.

going to die. I'm not really sure if they're going to keep continuing to pursue it in court. It might actually be better for Trump to win in court and have the court say, look, agencies don't have the FCC doesn't have this power at all, and so then you end this flip and flip flop, if you know, in future administrations, if you have a final word from the courts. Either way, it's great news for Comcast, AT and T, Verizon.

They don't have to worry about about these digital discrimination rules, net neutrality rules, all that.

subsidy programs. Going forward, and so I and Brendan Carr, the potential FCC chief, has been pushing, let's make big tech pay for those programs. So that's going to be potentially on the table after the Supreme Court case next year. You also have to note that Elon Musk operates Starlink, which has sought subsidies for serving rural broadband companies, and you start to wonder how that might play into revising any of these programs, as he has a satellite company

that's that's looking to get a piece of the pie. Lastly, broadcasters for decades, TV and radio stations have been shackled by these FCC media limits. You can only own so many TV stations in certain markets, so many radio stations. Republicans have long said, look, this doesn't make any sense anymore. There's all this new competition to broadcasters. Why does one industry have all these limits? And I think a Trump FCC is going to agree with that and really cut

back on regulation. You saw the Biden FCC block the ability to acquire Tegna a broadcaster. You're not going to see that from from a Trump led FCC. Those sorts of acquisitions aren't going to be blocked by the FCC.

The other one last note on the broadcasting angle. You've seen recently probably tweets from Elon Musk saying, let's take away all the broadcasters spectrum, all their licenses, and let's give that to wireless and let let broadcasters just cable companies, and you know, and and Congress has sort of done things like this in the past where it's had you know, look, I give us back some spectrum, uh, and we'll pay

you broadcasters. So the bottom line on this is, I think it's a lot of noise and politics until you see serious legislation moving in Congress, and it's probably going to need on a need to move on a bipartisan basis, because to get as we talked about earlier, to get through the Senate, you're going to need that. So I kind of keep that on the side of political noise until we see more concrete proposals and some hope of

it moving on a bipartisan basis. I don't I don't see, like you know, broadcasters being stripped of their spectrum and their licensing rights in any sort of comprehensive way, because it would require Congress on a bipartisan basis to do it.

or unofficial that influence is. And you also mentioned I thought it was interesting when you mentioned the broadband rules and whether you know it's better for them to get a court ruin to sort of undo them. I'm seeing the same thing, you know. I'm tracking dozens of lawsuits challenging SEC and CFPB rules. You know, I expect the new leadership in both those agencies to try to undo a lot of the rules that were promulgated in the

Biden administration. But we'll see whether the lawsuits also get stayed, or whether some of them continue and the rules get struck down via the courts.