Main Developments in Competition Law and Policy 2025 – United States

2025 was a handoff year for American antitrust. Would “MAGA Antitrust” embrace Biden’s populist direction or dismantle it?

On one hand, new leadership rejected Biden-era regulatory ambitions. “Antitrust in the United States is law enforcement. It is not regulation,” AAG Gail Slater, who recently departed the position, declared in her first major speech. Trump revoked Biden’s “whole-of-government” order on competition and issued his own, framing competition as deregulation. Appointees outlined “America First” antitrust: skeptical of broad regulation, hostile to foreign rivals, but willing to pursue targeted enforcement against perceived monopolies and “woke” firms.

On the other hand, Biden’s legal toolkit persisted. The 2023 Merger Guidelines remained in place. Labor enforcement remained a priority. Every major Big Tech monopolization suit pending at year’s start remained active, with agencies still litigating them.

So, which was it? While those tools endured, what changed was who got picked for enforcement and what winning looked like. This article tracks that shift across three dimensions:

• CAN. Can enforcers and private plaintiffs bring a viable case under current doctrines?

• PICK. Which companies get picked for enforcement, given agency priorities and presidential politics?

• FIX. When companies do not win cleanly, what is the likely fix: structural relief, behavioral obligations, or something else?

CAN: The legal toolkit survived the handoff

Under Biden, the antitrust agencies expanded their legal toolkit—and under Trump, that expansion persisted.

Consider labor enforcement. Days before Biden left, the agencies released updated guidelines stating that “the antitrust laws protect competition for labor, just as they protect competition for goods and services.” The next month, Trump’s agencies announced a Joint Labor Task Force, with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson echoing his predecessors: “Many Americans enter the economy not only as buyers of goods, but also as sellers of labor.”

Similar continuity appeared across the toolkit:

PICK: From universal rules to targeted enforcement

If the Biden-era toolkit carried into 2025 intact, the approach to picking targets changed—and so did the question of who controls that selection.

Labor as a priority. Where Biden sought to restructure markets through broad rulemaking, Trump focused on aggressive enforcement against specific targets. Consider noncompetes. Under Biden, the FTC attempted a nationwide ban via rulemaking. In September, the FTC dropped its appeal of the rule’s vacatur, with Chair Ferguson calling the rule’s illegality “patently obvious.” Yet the same week, the FTC approved a consent order against Gateway Pet Memorial Services banning the firm from enforcing noncompetes. Commissioner Slaughter’s dissent captured what the shift gave up: “This settlement does nothing to address the structural problems in the underlying market.”

Political engagement in enforcement. Several 2025 transactions featured significant political engagement alongside agency review. In HPE/Juniper, the DOJ sued to block a $14 billion deal in January, then settled in June after HPE retained Trump confidants Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz for reported seven-figure fees. AAG Slater reportedly opposed the settlement but was overruled. In December 2025, when asked about Netflix’s $83 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, Trump said he would “be involved in that decision.” In early 2026, Trump publicly endorsed Nexstar’s $6.2 billion bid for TEGNA, a deal that would exceed the congressionally mandated 39% national broadcast ownership cap, with FCC Chair Brendan Carr echoing the endorsement.

The pattern extended to criminal enforcement. Tim Leiweke, indicted for bid-rigging, received a presidential pardon weeks after his attorney, former Rep. Trey Gowdy, raised the case during a round of golf with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The pardon came the day before the DOJ was scheduled to depose Leiweke in a separate monopolization case against Live Nation. Press reports described Live Nation in settlement talks with senior DOJ officials outside the Antitrust Division. Mike Davis also lobbied on Live Nation’s behalf.

New tools for criminal enforcement. In April, the DOJ secured its first criminal wage-fixing conviction in United States v. Lopez. Criminal enforcement also gained a new identification tool: In July, the Division launched a first-of-its-kind whistleblower rewards program offering financial rewards for tips on postal-related antitrust crimes. The Biden DOJ’s whistleblower pilot had covered financial institution crimes, foreign and domestic corruption, and health care fraud, but did not extend to antitrust.

The growing independence of state enforcement. Federal peace did not guarantee finality. States were co-plaintiffs in every major monopolization case—Apple, Live Nation, Google ad tech, Amazon, and Deere—with independent state-law claims that federal settlement would not extinguish. Further, Washington and Colorado adopted “mini-HSR” regimes requiring parties to submit HSR materials to state attorneys general, with penalties up to $10,000 per day for noncompliance. States have also grown willing to challenge federal settlements. After the DOJ settled HPE/Juniper, 13 attorneys general moved to intervene, arguing the remedy was “wholly deficient” and the product of “undue” influence. The court granted permissive intervention in December; states remain active in the ongoing review.

The growing influence of private plaintiffs. The relationship between federal enforcement and private litigation runs both ways. In RealPage and Agri Stats, private plaintiffs tested the legal theories years before the DOJ filed its own suits. Once the DOJ validated the approach, private plaintiffs spread the algorithmic price-fixing theory across three industries. In healthcare, providers sued insurers in In re MultiPlan, alleging a shared pricing algorithm suppressed out-of-network reimbursements; plaintiffs alleged $19 billion in underpayments. The DOJ filed a Statement of Interest supporting the theory. In real estate, tenants extracted over $141 million from property managers as the DOJ settled with RealPage in November. In hospitality, guests sued hotels in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment. Even when private cases stumble—as in the Ninth Circuit’s August dismissal in Gibson v. Cendyn Group—the DOJ has filed amicus briefs supporting plaintiffs’ theories on appeal.

In late 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear whether the President can remove FTC commissioners at will (in Trump v. Slaughter), which could reshape executive control over enforcement priorities.

FIX: Survival under supervision

If “pick” is about selection, “fix” is about the price of survival. Under Biden, the stated preference was structural: block the merger, break up the monopoly. In 2025, outcomes shifted toward conduct remedies, data governance, and settlements that allowed companies to survive at the cost of operational control—sometimes by agency choice, sometimes by judicial ruling.

Trading structural breakup for operational control. United States v. Google (Search) produced the most significant Section 2 remedy since Microsoft. The court found Google liable for monopolization but rejected the DOJ’s proposed Chrome divestiture: “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets.” Instead, the remedy imposes ongoing oversight: Google must share search index and user-interaction data with qualified competitors, is barred from entering exclusive distribution agreements (with non-exclusive agreements capped at one year), and must submit to a Technical Committee for six years with “access to Google’s source code and algorithms.” As the opinion acknowledged, “the emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case.” Remedies looked forward to GenAI as much as backward to search.

Data governance becomes a perpetual tax, but timing determines what’s available. The RealPage settlement shows what this model looks like for ongoing conduct. The DOJ’s proposed consent judgment stripped the algorithm of some predictive power: RealPage must cease using active lease data for model training, use only data aged at least 12 months, and remove features that align pricing between competing users. A court-appointed monitor will oversee compliance, but there are no financial penalties and no admission of wrongdoing. The HPE/Juniper settlement extended the same governance logic to software IP, requiring HPE to auction perpetual, non-exclusive licenses to Juniper’s Mist AI Ops source code. But timing constrains what’s available. In FTC v. Meta, the window for structural relief had closed. A court refused to unwind Instagram and WhatsApp (acquisitions from 2012 and 2014) because the agency had to prove current monopoly power—earlier opinions “did not even mention the word TikTok,” now Meta’s “fiercest rival.”

Divestitures return to the negotiating table, and so does the fight over remedy quality. The Biden-era “just say no” posture has given way to battles over divestiture quality. In GTCR/Surmodics, the FTC argued the divestiture to Integer “exclude[d] the key assets and personnel that would be critical to Integer’s ability to compete effectively.” The court disagreed, calling Integer “an exceptionally well-qualified divestiture buyer” and holding that defendants need only show the divestiture “sufficiently” mitigated the merger’s effect.

Looking to 2026

2025 clarified what carried over between administrations and what changed. The Biden-era docket carried over, as did the 2023 Merger Guidelines and the focus on labor and algorithmic collusion. The year’s outcomes also redefined what “winning” looks like. In Google, RealPage, and HPE/Juniper, remedies moved away from structural breakup and toward supervision. Companies survived but ceded operational control. That leaves 2026 as an implementation year. State enforcement, private litigation, and judicial oversight will supply the friction that determines how durable these shifts prove to be.

Notice: The author did not get permission by his/her employer to publish, so it is publicated under a synonym.