{"id":32483,"date":"2017-11-22T14:32:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T09:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=32483"},"modified":"2017-11-22T14:32:28","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T09:32:28","slug":"att-plan-to-buy-time-warner-not-a-good-deal-says-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=32483","title":{"rendered":"AT&T plan to buy Time Warner ‘not a good deal,’ says Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON Nov 22 (TNS):<\/strong> \u00a0US President Donald Trump on Tuesday stood by his criticism of pay TV and wireless company AT&T\u2019s deal to buy movie and TV show maker Time Warner Inc, which the Justice Department has sued to stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2018m not going to get involved in litigation, but personally I\u2019ve always felt that that was a deal that\u2019s not a good deal for the country,\u201d the president said on the lawn of the White House as he left for Florida. \u201cI think your pricing\u2019s going to go up, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good deal for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case will be more closely watched than other merger challenges because Trump has been a vocal critic of Time Warner\u2019s CNN, and opposed AT&T\u2019s purchase of Time Warner on the campaign trail last year, saying it would concentrate too much power in AT&T\u2019s hands. Until Tuesday, he had not repeated that criticism.<\/p>\n

The US Department of Justice on Monday sued AT&T, arguing that it would use Time Warner\u2019s content to force rival pay-TV companies to pay \u201chundreds of millions of dollars more per year for Time Warner\u2019s networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department pushed back any suggestion that the decision to sue was done because of \u201cpolitical considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a law enforcement decision, not a political one. The DOJ has reached the end of a year-long investigation by a large, capable staff of expert lawyers and economists,\u201d a Justice Department spokesperson said in an email comment. \u201cThe division concluded on the merits that the merger is illegal under the antitrust laws because it will hurt competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

AT&T has vowed to defend the $85.4 billion (\u00a364.54 billion) deal in court.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice\u2019s move to block it was \u201cfoolish\u201d because the deal posed no threat to consumers, the wireless carrier\u2019s trial lawyer, Dan Petrocelli, told CNBC on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“We want to go to court as soon as possible,” Petrocelli told CNBC, saying the burden of proof was on the government.<\/p>\n

AT&T will ask the court for an expedited trial next week, a source familiar with case said.<\/p>\n

The case has been assigned to Judge Richard Leon, a senior judge on the District of Columbia District Court, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Time Warner shares went higher when Leon\u2019s assignment was announced as investors bet the judge would be more likely to allow the deal to proceed.<\/p>\n

Republican-appointed judges are generally, but not always, more business-friendly than those appointed by Democrats.<\/p>\n

Shares of Time Warner closed up 2.1 percent at $89.56 on Tuesday, signalling that investors believe the deal has a better chance of being approved. AT&T closed down less than 1 percent at $34.33.<\/p>\n

The merger challenge is unusual since the two companies do not compete directly.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department has not successfully litigated to stop a vertical deal – where the merging companies are not direct competitors, as is the case with AT&T and Time Warner – since the 1970s, when it prevented Ford Motor Co from buying assets from spark-plug maker Autolite.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON Nov 22 (TNS): \u00a0US President Donald Trump on Tuesday stood by his criticism of pay TV and wireless company AT&T\u2019s deal to buy movie and TV show maker Time Warner Inc, which the Justice Department has sued to stop. \u201cI\u2018m not going to get involved in litigation, but personally I\u2019ve always felt that that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,303],"tags":[304,733],"class_list":["post-32483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-washington","tag-washington","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32483"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32491,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32483\/revisions\/32491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}