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What happened to antitrust? We were making great progress and then a few months ago this admin totally flipped?
> The transaction faces numerous regulatory hurdles and will serve as a key test of the changed thinking around antitrust issues under President Donald Trump. In other words, the companies have agreed to merge, but regulators will still have to approve.
What happened to antitrust? We were making great progress and then a few months ago this admin totally flipped?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to be ~20x the value of the BNSF merger(~10x accounting for inflation). So yeah its pretty outlandish?
OK, but why does that make it "outlandish", as opposed to just "really big"? It's smaller than Pfizer buying Warner-Lambert in 1999. It's smaller (at least inflation adjusted) than Exxon-Mobil or Citicorp-Travelers. It's a lot smaller than AOL-Time Warner in 2000. It's smaller than Dow-duPont in 2015. Why is it outlandish? Because it involves railroads?
It'd be like privatizing the roads and then allowing the closure of the small farm roads because they're "not profitable". It'd be massively short sighted and would cause problems for decades, maybe over a century as we sort things out and get back on track. It's what we're in the middle of with railroads.
What happened to antitrust? We were making great progress and then a few months ago this admin totally flipped?
Yes they flipped. Lina Khan should have supported mergers for smaller companies (to help startups needing an exit) while breaking up the largest and most abusive companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. Unfortunately now more will come. Warren Buffett is more likely to pursue his own rail merger for BNSF (owned by Berkshire Hathaway): https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2025/berkshire-bnsf-ba...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they flipped. Lina Khan should have supported mergers for smaller companies (to help startups needing an exit) while breaking up the largest and most abusive companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. Unfortunately now more will come. Warren Buffett is more likely to pursue his own rail merger for BNSF (owned by Berkshire Hathaway): https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2025/berkshire-bnsf-ba...
Ok but even ignoring her this admin totally flipped? Tr*mp was taking a much harder line and now he’s letting everything through?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absurd and easily and trivially disputed. Having a nationwide network absolutely lets you compete with networks that are more regional "If you want to use our western routes you have to use us in the east too." > larger network would make things more efficient for shippers LOL > goods can travel coast to coast without changing trains They already can.
Disputed does not mean disproven. There are reasonable people who think this merge would be good, and reasonable people who think it would be bad, and perhaps we can discuss pros and cons without acting like asses?
So here is a map of who owns the railways so we can ascertain who would be affected by the merger.
https://stb.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap...
I think this is bad becasue it will kill CSX as their lines will be less used for cross country deliveries.
CSX already had ana anti-trust suite against Norfolk which was rejected during this administration.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/supreme-court-wont-hear-cs...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, but why does that make it "outlandish", as opposed to just "really big"? It's smaller than Pfizer buying Warner-Lambert in 1999. It's smaller (at least inflation adjusted) than Exxon-Mobil or Citicorp-Travelers. It's a lot smaller than AOL-Time Warner in 2000. It's smaller than Dow-duPont in 2015. Why is it outlandish? Because it involves railroads?
In short, "yes, because it's railroads". There's not much else that requires so much public resources (land) and capital; yet for that railroads deliver a broad capability (hyper thermodynamically efficient over land transport) that is not replicable via any other technology or practice. If we don't develop/improve that capability, we give up a tremendous amount of ability. If we let it consolidate and then atrophy,…
Second, railroads are more efficient at hauling stuff longer distances. They are not more efficient at local pick up and delivery, though. Letting trucks take over that part makes things more efficient, not less. Your "closure of small farm roads" analogy is therefore off base.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they flipped. Lina Khan should have supported mergers for smaller companies (to help startups needing an exit) while breaking up the largest and most abusive companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. Unfortunately now more will come. Warren Buffett is more likely to pursue his own rail merger for BNSF (owned by Berkshire Hathaway): https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2025/berkshire-bnsf-ba...
Could you explain why you think any "startup" "needs an exit"? Why should we accept businesses that cannot persist on their own? This comment caught me off guard with how blatantly VC-sycophantic it is.
Because it is, and always has been, profit over product (and people).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they flipped. Lina Khan should have supported mergers for smaller companies (to help startups needing an exit) while breaking up the largest and most abusive companies like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. Unfortunately now more will come. Warren Buffett is more likely to pursue his own rail merger for BNSF (owned by Berkshire Hathaway): https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2025/berkshire-bnsf-ba...
Could you explain why you think any "startup" "needs an exit"? Why should we accept businesses that cannot persist on their own? This comment caught me off guard with how blatantly VC-sycophantic it is.
For employees it means waiting 15-20 years for a payday. How many people can take such a big risk, going half their career underpaid waiting for their options to become something? Companies are meanwhile forced to raise capital that isn’t from the public stock exchanges and that can also go on only for so long. Meanwhile you have these giant companies like Google or whatever who can just copy your great idea/business and throw money or people at it, eventually killing you before you get to exit. Look at how Microsoft abused their Office sales contracts to give away Teams to kill Slack. Eventually that forced Slack to sell to Salesforce.
I guess I view it as chicken and egg. If the huge mega corp companies were broken up or heavily regulated maybe smaller companies wouldn’t need mergers and acquisitions as much because they would be more stable in a fair competitive environment.
But I’m not an expert in any of this. I’ve just seen others talk about all this when lurking on this website.