PHILLIP BELL: There’s One Merger Trump’s FTC Shouldn’t Hesitate To Approve

The United States has long been the “Land of Opportunity.” That has been true since our founding and remained through different epochs of political change and social turmoil.

During the past few years, however, that opportunity has been tempered by the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust enforcement which touched many industries. Many in the business community hope President Donald Trump will end this practice, and the recently-announced Honda-Nissan merger, that will likely include Mitsubishi, offers an important test case. (RELATED: CONNIE MACK IV: Biden Let America’s Enemies Run Amok In Western Hemisphere. Now, There’s A New Sheriff In Town)

The announcement of a merger always leads to a variety of responses, ranging from excitement about what the combined company will do to fears about potential job losses and facility closures. One common refrain is that successful companies are coming together with a goal of cornering the market and stifling the consumer.

In this instance, however, the driving forces included Nissan’s financial decline and a shift in the Chinese market that impacted both Nissan and Honda. Though business leaders work to build companies able to weather such setbacks, no enterprise is bulletproof and frequently the best way to preserve a company’s best parts —people, products and procedures — is a voluntary merger.

By nature, mergers create larger companies — whether measured by the number of employees, amount of revenue generated or size of the territory served. Yet, since the “Trustbuster” era, Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that large businesses will imperil our personal freedom.

The Biden administration followed this erroneous idea, empowering true believers like the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Lina Khan and Merrick Garland at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to aggressively pursue companies that are seeking to merge, along with some that already have.

The Khan-led FTC famously created its own definition of the handbag market to torpedo a merger between luxury goods manufactures Michael Kors and Kate Spade.

Meanwhile, the DOJ slayed an imaginary dragon in its effort to stop a deal that would have seen discount air carrier Spirit Airlines combined with the more upmarket JetBlue. After DOJ won the argument in court, Spirit Airlines declared bankruptcy, putting at risk all of the discount airline seats that Federal Judge William Young claimed would be lost in a merger with JetBlue.

In years past, a change in administration from a Democrat hawkish on antitrust enforcement almost always meant a shift toward a dovish Republican. This time is different.

As recently as August of 2024, now-Vice President J.D. Vance praised Khan’s antitrust enforcement work with respect to tech firms, while Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has been critical of large businesses, such as Visa and Mastercard, claiming they are “effectively monopolies.”

With these key Republican voices arrayed against large businesses in an era of unified Republican government — where every vote in the House and Senate counts and dealmaking will play a critical role — it is greatly concerning what path the U.S. Government will pursue with respect to antitrust enforcement during the next two years.

What will that mean for Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi and the driving public? The answer is presently unknown but allowing these companies to turn the key on this merger without conditions would be a tremendous enhancement to American opportunity. While a merger will undoubtedly mean the closure of some dealerships and pruning of existing model lines, neither of these will prevent Americans from finding cars we want to drive at a range of affordable prices.

While antitrust hawks view every market as a closed market, this is not true and never has been. Americans can purchase automobiles from Aston-Martin, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Jaguar, Stellantis, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

Many of those firms have brands serving different price points and driver needs. That incomplete listing comes before considering Electric Vehicle makers such as Lucid, Rivian, and Tesla — major business enterprises which did not exist at the turn of the Century. Notably, this list also does not include any of the prospective merger partners: Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. Thus, the entire American automobile marketplace exemplifies famed GM President Alfred Sloan’s pronouncement of “A Car for Every Purse and Purpose.”

Even if all of the companies mentioned here chose to join an industry-wide merger movement, the roster of auto manufacturers would remain incredibly robust.

This is the essence of the free marketplace meeting the needs of the individual and the group. That is why the Trump administration should be enthusiastically waving the checkered flag when this transaction comes up for review.

Furthermore, with both Honda and Nissan’s U.S. operations being largely non-union, approving this deal will not imperil the relationship that Team Trump cultivated with organized labor during the 2024 campaign.

Swift approval of this merger should be followed by similar approval of the combination between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel, which was blocked by the Biden administration in its waning days. Doing so would send a positive signal to investors, foreign and domestic, that our industrial base is open for innovation and welcoming to fresh capital.

Such capital is the lifeblood of American innovation and critical to realize the American Golden Age that President Trump seeks to create.

Will the young drivers of 2030 lust after a Honda Prelude built on Nissan 350Z underpinnings the same way newly-minted drivers of 1990 sought earlier versions of those cars? Nobody knows.

However, the best way to ensure that America’s veins continue to pump with commerce will be for government to allow the Honda-Nissan-Mitsubishi combination to take place and leave the American People to determine where the road will take us.

Phillip Bell is the Deputy Director of the Parkview Institute’s Center for Transportation Advancement, and host of the All Aboard Podcast by All Things Trains.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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