Last year we noted that U.S. antitrust enforcement was in a period of nearly unprecedented public attention and policy debate, and also that the Biden Administration seemed likely to launch significant new policy initiatives as the year progressed. 

In the third episode of a three-part series on U.S. antitrust enforcement, host Nick Levy interviews Cleary Gottlieb colleagues Bruce Hoffman and Leah Brannon about the U.S. enforcement environment for Big Tech, the agencies’ application of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and the prospects for legislative change.

In the second episode of a three-part series on U.S. antitrust enforcement, host Nick Levy interviews Cleary Gottlieb colleagues Dave Gelfand and Heather Nyongo’o about U.S. antitrust and merger litigation, the prospects for legislative change in the U.S., and their practical experiences of handling major litigation at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and in private practice.

On Tuesday, January 18th, FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter held a joint press conference in which they announced ambitious plans to review and update the Merger Guidelines, targeting a release of new guidelines before the end of 2022.

In the 2021 edition of this memo, we wrote that antitrust in 2020 received more political and media attention than at any recent time. 2021 beat that standard in multiple ways, and 2022 looks to continue that trend. In addition to continuing the major tech cases brought under the Trump administration, 2021 saw unprecedented levels of legislative activity in antitrust (both federal and state), competition policy taking a leading position across federal agencies and startling new approaches at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in particular – new approaches that, while they haven’t yet produced a wave of new enforcement actions, have required changes in thinking about and approaching antitrust issues. We expect these trends to accelerate in 2022.