The Antitrust Thucydides’ Trap: Telecom Mergers Meets Great Power Competition

Speaker:
Oscar Oliveira
Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

Full description:
The decision from the U.S. government to ban TikTok over national security concerns brought foreign ownership to the mainstream. Deals like the U.S Steel proposed merger with the Japanese Nippon Steel, and the Czech company CSG acquisition of Kinetic Group, a leading American small caliber ammunition producer, were recently evaluated under national security lenses. The grip of nationalism on Corporate Law is not new, even in the business-friendly U.S. regulations. In this presentation, Oscar Oliveira poses a different question: Should mergers between American-owned companies be evaluated under national security lenses? Analyzing the successful merger between telecom companies Sprint and T-Mobile, the presentation discusses direct effects and possible externalities of antitrust enforcement and propose that a competitive economy may be better not only for American citizens’ wealth, but also for their security.

Oscar Oliveira is a second-year M.P.P. student at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Before coming to Yale, Oscar earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Law from Universidade de Brasília, in Brazil. In addition, he worked for several 6 years in the Brazilian Federal Government civil service as a Public Policy Analyst, with prior experiences in management consulting, retail banking and NGOs in Brazil. At Jackson, his academic focus is on the interaction of nationalism with law and corporations. In an international order based on competition between firms and nation states, he is interested in understanding how corporate regulation plays a role in national security policy. After graduation, he is returning to civil service in Brazil and intends to pursue his academic interests in a future PhD in Law.

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