It’s the economics, stupid: The Tipline for 25 July 2023

One of the chief architects of the 2010 merger guidelines is not impressed with the blueprint for the new one. University of California professor Carl Shapiro said courts will no longer defer to the next iteration of the guidelines in the same way if they appear as the Biden Administration has drafted them. “They've been demoted from this articulation of economic principles, consistent with the case law, into a legal brief,” the former top economist of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division has said. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial section affords one of its primary antagonists, Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, a platform to defend the proposal.