Kamala Harris is murky on antitrust. Wall Street sees an opportunity

Wall Street dealmakers said they believe Vice President Kamala Harris, if she were to win the November presidential election against Donald Trump, is a clean slate on antitrust regulation and a prime opportunity to loosen the Biden antitrust regime.

“This ‘big is bad’ hostility [from Biden] will fall by the wayside” in a potential Harris administration, according to White & Case partner George Paul, who advised an attempted merger between Kroger and Albertsons. “I don’t think Harris will go that far. I think she’s going to take a step back.”

Wall Street’s hope for more lax regulation under Harris, the de facto Democratic presidential nominee, might suggest a broader view that her stances on corporate regulation are still malleable.

Just over a week into her presidential campaign and just under 100 days until the election, the Harris campaign is constructing an economic platform at warp speed, working to flesh out her position on key policy issues.

So far, Harris has stayed silent on antitrust enforcement, a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s big-business crackdown.

“The White House did not look to her to provide support on the competition policy agenda, so maybe she was doing things in the background, but it’s not really visible to the naked eye,” Bill Kovacic, former Federal Trade Commission chair, said in an interview. “So I think she has some freedom to maneuver.”

As far as the campaign trail goes, Harris will likely stick to Biden’s economic script of corporate antagonism. But what happens with tangible policy if she takes the White House is an open question.

In the meantime, M&A dealmakers are trying to fill in the blanks.

The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the vice president’s antitrust position.

Harris’ record as California’s attorney general might provide some insight into her antitrust philosophy, according to experts.

Bill Baer, an antitrust policy advisor on Biden’s presidential transition team in 2021, served as the Department of Justice’s antitrust chief while Harris occupied the attorney general role. As antitrust chief, Baer occasionally crossed paths with Harris’ office on anti-monopoly cases.

“She and I did not have any personal interaction, so we did not discuss stuff, but her antitrust team was talented, experienced and really quite effective,” Baer said in an interview with CNBC. “As best I can tell, she was quite supportive of a vigorous antitrust enforcement at the state level.”

Harris’ AG office took several regulatory actions to break up corporate power, particularly in the health-care sector. In 2016, her office joined a federal lawsuit to block a health insurance merger between Anthem and Cigna. That same year,…