*

Big Tech antitrust cases to continue, though approach may

soften

*

Trump expected to ax policies criticized by business

groups

*

FTC has Democratic majority until Lina Khan replaced

By Jody Godoy

Nov 6 (Reuters) -

Donald Trump will likely dial back some of the antitrust

policies pursued under the administration of President Joe

Biden, potentially including a bid to break up Alphabet's

Google over its dominance in online search, experts

said.

Trump is expected to continue cases against Big Tech,

several of which began in his first term, but his recent

skepticism about a potential Google breakup highlights the power

he will hold over how those cases are run.

"If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What

you can do without breaking it up is make sure it's more fair,"

he said at an event in Chicago in October.

The U.S. Department of Justice is currently pursuing two

antimonopoly cases against Google - one over search and another

over advertising technology, as well as a case against Apple ( AAPL )

. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing Meta

Platforms ( META ) and Amazon.com ( AMZN ).

The DOJ has laid out a range of potential remedies in the

search case, including making Google divest parts of its

business such as the Chrome Web browser and ending agreements

that make it the default search engine on devices like Apple's ( AAPL )

iPhone.

But the trial over those fixes will not happen until April

2025, with a final ruling likely in August. That gives Trump and

the DOJ time to change course if they choose, said William

Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University.

"He is certainly in the position to control the DOJ's

disposition of the remedies phase," said Kovacic, who chaired

the Federal Trade Commission under then-president George W.

Bush.

Trump is also likely to pull back on some policies that have

irritated dealmakers under the Biden administration, attorneys

said. One is a reluctance to settle with merging companies,

which was previously common and let companies address

competition problems that agencies raised about deals by taking

actions like selling part of the business.

The FTC and DOJ would likely scrap merger review guidelines

crafted under Biden, said Jon Dubrow, a partner at law firm

McDermott Will & Emery.

"The 2023 merger guidelines were very hostile to mergers and

acquisitions," he said, echoing a view widely held on Wall

Street.

The FTC's ban on most noncompete clauses in

employer-employee contracts could be more vulnerable to a

lawsuit brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, if the FTC

votes not to defend it.

About 30 million people, or 20% of U.S. workers, have signed

noncompetes, according to the FTC. The agency is currently

appealing a court ruling that blocked the rule.

But such actions to dismantle the work of FTC Chair Lina

Khan will depend on a Trump-appointed replacement being

confirmed to give the bipartisan five-member commission a

Republican majority.

Khan's initiatives focused on what she saw as societal harms

caused by unchecked corporate consolidation, drawing praise from

both Democrats and some Republicans, including Vice

President-elect JD Vance. But some in the business and legal

communities have criticized her approach as too aggressive.

Trump is not expected to drastically curtail antitrust

enforcement, however. A similar number of merger cases was

brought under his first term as during the first two years of

the Biden administration, according to an analysis by the

Sheppard Mullin law firm.