U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the DOJ antitrust division told CNBC’s Jim Cramer the government’s latest draft of merger guidelines are meant to give businesses the chance to compete.
The new Department of Justice regulations are in line with the Biden administration’s enforcement of antitrust laws and crackdown on mergers and acquisitions in numerous sectors including tech and labor.
“Businesses want the opportunity to compete,” Kanter said. “They want the opportunity to compete based on the merits of their inventions and their innovations, and their pricing and their customer service. That’s what we want, too. We don’t want to pick winners and losers, we simply want to give businesses the opportunity.”
Kanter said markets have transformed and evolved significantly in the past 15 years, and that the new guidelines are meant to keep up with those changes. He added that “more often than not,” businesses tell him that they want antitrust enforcement.
Kanter said he thinks this kind of competition is essential to the American dream.
“It’s not possible if there is no ability to enter a market and compete and build a business from the ground up,” Kanter said. “And so we want to protect the competitive process so that businesses can realize those innovations.”
