USA

The Department of Justice moved on Thursday to block the acquisition of Juniper Networks of $ 14 billion of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the first agreement that will be challenged by antimonopoly executors during the second mandate of President Trump.

In a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the Government said the agreement “runs the risk of substantially decreasing competition in a critically important technological market.” The agency said the agreement would end a corporate rivalry in the wireless network industry that resulted in lower prices for large companies, universities, hospitals and other buyers of complex technological systems.

The lawsuit occurred so many in corporate America that he expected a lighter touch under Mr. Trump to unleash a wave of agreements after four years of hard scrutiny by regulators under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. but the Attempt this week to stop the Technological Agreement suggests that there may be more consistency between Biden and Trump administrations on the antitrust application of what some had thought.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a software and business services company, announced the acquisition of $ 14 billion of Juniper last year, hoping to combine its data centers with Juniper's network business to assume giants as Cisco.

The regulators in Great Britain and the European Union clarified the agreement this summer. But the anti -political administration executors of the Biden Administration had issued what is known as a “second request” to obtain more information, indicating the scrutiny of the transaction.

The lawsuit was filed by Omeed Assefi, exploited by Trump to be the interim attached attorney general of the antiponopoly division of the Department of Justice. Trump's nominee for the main antitrust paper, Gail Slater, is not yet confirmed. Mrs. Slater previously worked as a policy advisor for Vice President JD Vance and for the National Economic Council during Mr. Trump's first mandate. Mr. Vance has sometimes complemented the efforts of Lina Khan, the President of the Federal Federal Commission of Mr. Biden, and has criticized large technology companies as <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-interview-big-tech-too-much-power/” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>”Have too much power.”

While some experts had expected Mr. Trump's antitrust guard dogs to be attentive to the big social networks, in line with bipartisan concerns about freedom of expression and censorship, bankers waited more under the radar.

“The threat that this fusion represents is not theoretical,” said Assefi in a statement. “Vital industries in our country, including US hospitals and small businesses, depend on wireless networks to complete their missions.”

Juniper's competition has forced HPE to “discard deeply” and invest in his software, the lawsuit said. A combination of the two, according to government lawyers, would quell innovation and force buyers of equipment and services to pay a higher price.

HPE and Juniper are the largest and third players in business -grade networks in the United States, with a combined participation of approximately one fifth of the market, according to industry estimates. Cisco controls approximately half of the market.

The agreement is also proof of how officials will address companies that present their agreements in terms aligned with the “America First” Agenda of Trump. In statementHPE called the demand of the “fundamentally defective” justice department and, among other things, said that the combined company would create “a convincing alternative and based in the United States worldwide to the headlines, fortifying the central technology sector American that serves as the backbone of US networks infrastructure. ” The agreement would also reinforce national security, added the company.

“We will defend ourselves vigorously against the excessive interpretation of the Department of Justice of antimonopoly laws,” said the company.

The regulators strongly analyzed mergers and acquisitions during the Biden administration, since the officials resisted corporate consolidation throughout the economy. Last year, the FTC prevented Kroger to buy Albertsons for fear that it will result in higher food prices, and challenged a fusion between Tapestry and Capri, two bag producers, to promote competition in the market of ” accessible luxury “. In 2022, the Department of Justice blocked the editorial giant Penguin Random House to buy Simon and Schuster.

The agencies did not always succeed in the court. The FTC tried and could not block that Meta bought a new virtual reality company and could not prevent Microsoft Buying Activision, the video game editor. The Department of Justice lost a challenge for the purchase of a company by Unitedhealth Group that helps process insurance claims.

Many industry groups accused regulators of suffocating agreements that were good for consumers and expressed hope that the next administration would adopt a different approach. David Zaslav, executive director of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in July that the next president should present an “opportunity for deregulation, so that companies can consolidate and do what we need, to be even better.”