Larry Summers says federal government is waging a ‘war on business’ by proposing tougher antitrust rules for acquisitions

By Ana Monteiro of Fortune and Bloomberg. Excerpts:

"Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned that the Biden administration’s crackdown on mergers and acquisitions through a sweeping overhaul of rules the government uses to determine whether deals violate competition law “seems almost like a war on business.”

“These guidelines — by moving away from an emphasis on lower prices for consumers to broader abstractions — are a substantial risk,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin. “I wish that this stepping back and offering merger guidelines had been taken as an opportunity to rationalize the policy.”"

"“Right now, where I think where you’re moving away from low consumer prices as a standard, you’re mostly moving into problematic territory,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg TV. “There’s been a lot of that in the last several years, and it sure seems like they’re pushing forward harder, rather than backing off.”"