Our recent event, “Antitrust in Action: Enforcement Priorities and the Path Forward,” brought together top U.S. and UK competition enforcers alongside key White House and regulatory voices for a candid discussion on where antitrust policy is headed under the current administration.
Featuring FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Acting AAG for the DOJ Antitrust Division Omeed Assefi, Deputy Director of the NEC Ryan Baasch, UKCMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the March 26 event delivered clarity on enforcement priorities, cross-border coordination, and what businesses across sectors need to know next.
Andrew Ferguson, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission & Omeed Assefi, Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
The opening panel featured the two top federal antitrust enforcers — FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Omeed Assefi, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division — and set the tone for a conference marked by disagreements between the current administration and state enforcers over the direction of U.S. antitrust policy.
Both officials pushed back against suggestions that lobbying or politics have influenced enforcement decisions under the current administration. Chairman Ferguson declared that he makes up his own mind and acts consistently with the law and the mandate the American people voted for. Assefi, meanwhile, defended the DOJ’s widely criticized settlement with Live Nation and Ticketmaster — reached abruptly after just one week of a scheduled six-week jury trial in New York federal court — while welcoming state attorneys general who are continuing to litigate on their own. Though a handful of states have since settled alongside the DOJ, most are pressing ahead with independent litigation. Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia were co-plaintiffs in the federal case. Assefi said he is “very proud” of the settlement and hopes the states “get the remedies they want.”
Assefi welcomed the eagerness of state AGs who have signaled they will step forward in cases where the federal government steps back, calling such statements amusing rather than threatening and framing it as consistent with a pro-enforcement posture. Assefi also encouraged FTC Chairman Ferguson to open an investigation whenever the DOJ declines a case so that resources can be concentrated where they matter most. “The easiest thing to do is just file a complaint,” Assefi said. “But when you approach the job as an actual litigator and an enforcer, you don’t end at the complaint, you focus on going all the way to trial and to settlement.”
Ferguson was blunt on several other fronts, calling the previous Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) merger filing amendments “insane” while allowing that some revisions are warranted — for instance, to address companies that execute divestitures after filing, or that engage in “acquihiring” rather than outright mergers. On artificial intelligence and competition, Ferguson characterized demands by large content companies for compensation when their material is used to train AI models as “rent-seeking,” and cautioned that ceding ground to China on AI development would put the United States “in trouble.”
Ryan Baasch, Deputy Director, National Economic Council
The second panel featured Ryan Baasch, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Baasch defended the administration’s antitrust record and pushed back against media coverage he characterized as misleading and politically motivated. Baasch argued that the increased engagement with federal agencies from non-traditional third-party actors during the Trump administration has been “novel” but “not a problem,” while noting that critics of recent DOJ and FTC decisions also tend to be Washington insiders.
He was dismissive of concerns about the DOJ’s Live Nation settlement and the DOJ’s and FCC’s approval of the Nexstar–Tegna broadcast merger, which a coalition of state AGs have challenged as presumptively illegal and argued that the agencies disregarded established precedent in their decision-making. Baasch described such criticism as long-time Washington figures “lashing out” at change, and said of the controversy broadly: “It’s much ado about nothing, in my opinion.”
On emerging policy issues, Baasch — a co-author of the White House’s AI Legislative Framework — was sharply critical of state-level AI regulation, singling out Colorado’s law that holds AI developers liable for discriminatory uses of their models by third parties and calling it “basically censorship” that will harm consumers. On agency independence, he stated plainly that “the concept of an independent agency makes no sense to me,” signaling the administration’s position that FTC and DOJ antitrust enforcement should operate in alignment with executive branch priorities.
Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive, United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority
The third panel featured an international lens from Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s principal antitrust regulator. She said she aims for the CMA to be predictable, without an ideological mission, and transparent with the businesses they regulate. She also touted market study tools and benefits of specialized technical staff to bolster teams outside of economists and lawyers.
Contrasting UK policy with the perceived U.S. one, Cardell noted that the nationality of a firm does not come into play in the outcome of a competition test – that the CMA will be more likely to intervene if there is an anticipated UK-specific impact from a given deal, and is generally supportive of collaboration and joint ventures. On the question of algorithmic collusion by AI bots, she like other regulators is continuing to explore interventions to the currently unanswered question.
Brendan Carr, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed his regulatory philosophy early with a “Gretzky test” metaphor: regulators, he argued, should assess where a market is headed rather than taking a static snapshot of where it stands today. Carr praised President Trump as among the most transparent presidents in the nation’s history and applied that forward-looking lens to defend the recent Nexstar–Tegna merger clearance. In his view, the consolidation is a rational response to a media environment in which local broadcasters and local journalism are under severe pressure from dominant online platforms. The transaction has drawn legal challenges from a coalition of state attorneys general, including Colorado AG Phil Weiser, who argue that the DOJ and FCC disregarded established merger standards and prior agency precedents in approving the deal.
Related to his concern about local broadcasters, Carr called the NFL’s antitrust exemption “a very live, very ripe question” as the league moves to have more games on paywalled streaming services. Expressing concern for the health of local journalism throughout his conversation, Carr identified sports rights for affiliate stations as one way to maintain local reporting and revenue.
As for the “legacy” media, Carr appreciated that outlets like CBS have begun “doing something different” to combat declining viewership and readership, dismissing claims that he has been weaponizing tools like state pressure and censorship to curry more positive news coverage for the administration and punish rivals, tactics that he previously accused Democrats of using. He summed up his goals as “we do some regulating, we do some deregulating, we make telecom great again.”
Want to hear more from the speakers? Register below to watch the full panel recordings: