Larry Summers Says Team Biden's Crackdown On M&A 'Almost Like A War On Business'

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has expressed concern over the Biden administration’s crackdown on mergers and acquisitions, stating it “seems almost like a war on business,” Bloomberg reports.

Concerns Over New Guidelines: Summers criticized the new guidelines proposed by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.), which aim to curb the rise of companies seeking to dominate their industries by buying up rivals.

“These guidelines — by moving away from an emphasis on lower prices for consumers to broader abstractions — are a substantial risk,” Summers said.

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Impact on Business: The new guidelines are aimed at providing greater transparency to the public and companies about how antitrust enforcers are thinking about the law amid constant changes in markets and industries.

However, Summers thinks otherwise.

“Right now, where I think where you're moving away from low consumer prices as a standard, you're mostly moving into problematic territory,” said Summers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also condemned the new proposal, stating it upends decades of bipartisan consensus that mergers aid the U.S. economy.

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Image by International Monetary Fund on Flickr