The agency’s two Republican commissioners, who have vociferously opposed some of Chair Lina Khan’s other major rulemakings, joined the panel’s three Democrats in supporting changes to rules for complying with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The discussions also involved the agency’s top competition staffer and the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Henry Liu, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, declined to discuss details of the negotiations, but said the rule was a product of “healthy dialogue among the commissioners” including “a rigorous cost-benefit discussion about the new requirements.” The Republican commissioners began pushing for changes to the HSR rules soon after they joined the agency, the people familiar said.
The negotiations took on renewed vigor after a federal judge in Texas ruled against the FTC in its non-compete rulemaking in early July, the people said. Judge Ada Brown’s decision adopted many of the same arguments that Holyoak and Ferguson had articulated in their dissents. The FTC’s Democrats hoped that unanimous, bipartisan support for the merger rules would make business groups less likely to sue, the people said, or help the agency win in court if a lawsuit was filed.
The return “removes a politically motivated bureaucratic burden on procompetitive transactions,” he said.