At an Open Commission Meeting on November 14, 2024, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff gave a presentation on the FTC’s new online merger portal, which provides a way for members of the public to comment on proposed mergers.

However, as Commissioner Melissa Holyoak noted in her oral comments in that meeting, “the form’s constructions and prompts are written to foreclose potentially positive opinions about the relevant merger and elicit only negative opinions.”

Commissioner Holyoak’s comments raise the concern that the portal is another “application of the Majority’s biases against mergers.” This may be particularly striking given that the merger portal link is in addition to a File an Antitrust Complaint link, where individuals can supply the same information about a proposed merger—that form includes the same questions.

Commissioner Holyoak argues that rather than start with a presumption that all mergers are anticompetitive, the “Commission must return to its strong foundation of employing economic analyses to assess competitive effects.”