Kara and Scott discuss the showdown between the Trump administration and the judiciary, President Trump’s firings at the FTC, and Starlink’s latest available location…The White House! Then, the HHS has removed a Surgeon General’s advisory on gun violence from its website, BYD’s new fast-charging technology, and Forever 21 is blaming Shein and Temu for its bankruptcy. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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But because Trump was elected, the FTC and the DOJ have effectively have an entirely different complexion now in terms of the bar or how high the bar needs to be to file an action to block a merger and acquisition. And what do you know, Google came back and said, let's acquire this company.
So under the Biden administration, you know, last year was a record low for M&A, but you're going to see a lot, you're going to see a further consolidation of power. And one of the biggest issues facing our economy is really boring. You know, it's the boring stuff that moves the needle.
And it's the fact that across everything from home renovations to chicken to things like fertilizer, much less digital media, there are a small handful of companies that They control the entire market, and the result is in concentrated industries, they can charge higher rents on corporations and on consumers.
So if you want – I mean, it sounds really boring, but if you want inflation to come down over the medium and the long term, you want a really robust FTC and DOJ, and they're no longer that. They're basically there to say, okay – Jonathan Cantor, who I had on the podcast – was more optimistic.
He said that a lot of people still at the FTC and the DOJ are not exactly, they're not just going to roll over. Yeah, especially the DOJ. We still haven't been able to effectively on the left communicate that M&A, while it feels like capitalism and it's more macho and get out of the way of companies, We have seven companies basically driving the stock market right now.
Google bought the Wiz for $32 billion, for people who don't know. It's a security cloud company, cloud security startup.
I think it's the biggest acquisition ever.
It is. It's enormous. So it really is anti-competitive because it's one of the most fast-growing software companies in the world right now. So it's taking out, again, a really robust competitor, which is really something.
Well, when companies... Okay, it's their biggest acquisition ever. It's only a 1.5% dilution to their stock price. They have a $2 trillion market cap. They can make a $30 billion acquisition. I mean, these companies...
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