Washington, D.C. — The American Economic Liberties Project today released the following statement in response to Nvidia’s decision to abandon its acquisition of chip-design specialist Arm after regulators raised antitrust concerns.

“This is an important outcome for Lina Khan and the FTC. In a bipartisan 4-0 vote, enforcers challenged and blocked a bad deal, while also changing antitrust enforcement,” said Matt Stoller, Research Director at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Typically antitrust enforcers are skeptical when firms buy direct rivals, but are tolerant of what are called ‘vertical’ mergers, where a firm buys a supplier or customer. In this case, the FTC — in a unanimous vote — challenged and blocked a vertical merger.”

“In 2017, AT&T argued that the government’s challenge to its vertical deal with Time Warner was ‘inexplicable.’ And it prevailed in court. But this FTC is changing how antitrust law works,” added Stoller. “This is the third vertical merger challenge by the Biden FTC, which has challenged Illumina-Grail, Nvidia-ARM, and Lockheed-Aerojet.”

“Antitrust enforcers today are out-gunned, and they need more money and stronger laws from Congress to do their jobs properly,” said Stoller. “But what these challenges show is that it is no longer safe to flagrantly monopolize markets in America.”

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.