In president Trump’s new fiscal 2018 budget the antitrust division will not see any reductions, according to Bloomberg. The White House proposed a $1.1 billion cut in funding for the Justice Department but the antitrust division will not suffer from them.
The White House proposed that the antitrust division remain at its current level of funding, at just under $165 million. The first major budget proposal of the Trump administration, released today, requests $27.7 billion for the Justice Department, a 3.8 percent decrease from the department’s current funding level reports Bloomberg.
The DOJ’s antitrust division is of particular interest to Wall Street because its officials review major mergers, and the agency can sue to block them if the proposed tie-ups show a substantial likelihood of harming competition. A decrease in funding for the division, which is relatively lean, could mean less enforcement guidance about merger reviews and less scrutiny of illegal conduct such as price fixing.
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