The Justice Department on Thursday moved to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, the first deal to be challenged by antitrust enforcers during President Trump’s second term.
In a lawsuit filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the government said the deal “risks substantially lessening competition in a critically important technology market.” The agency said that the deal would end a corporate rivalry in the wireless networking industry that resulted in lower prices.
The suit came as many in corporate America had expected that a lighter touch under Mr. Trump would unleash a wave of deal making after four years of tough scrutiny by the regulators under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But the attempt this week to stop the tech deal suggests there may more consistency between the Biden and Trump administrations on antitrust enforcement than some had thought.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, a business software and services company, announced the $14 billion takeover of Juniper last year, with hopes of combining its data centers with Juniper’s networking business to take on giants like Cisco.
Regulators in Britain and the European Union cleared the deal this summer. But the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers had issued what is known as a “second request” for more information, indicating scrutiny of the transaction.
The suit was brought by Omeed Assefi, tapped by Mr. Trump to be the acting assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Mr. Trump’s nominee for the top antitrust role, Gail Slater, is not yet confirmed. Ms. Slater previously worked as policy adviser for Vice President JD Vance and during Mr. Trump’s first presidential term. Mr. Vance has at times complimented the efforts of Lina Khan, Mr. Biden’s trustbusting Federal Trade Commission chair, and has criticized big technology companies as “having too much power.”
While some experts had expected Mr. Trump’s antitrust watchdogs to keep a close eye on large social media companies — in line with bipartisan concerns over speech and censorship — bankers hoped the new administration would be more amenable to deals involving technology companies like HPE that fly more under the radar.
“The threat this merger poses is not theoretical,” Mr. Assefi said in a statement. “Vital industries in our country — including American hospitals and small businesses — rely on wireless networks to complete their missions.”
Regulators heavily scrutinized mergers and acquisitions during the Biden administration, as officials pushed back against corporate consolidation across the economy. Last year, the F.T.C. stopped the grocery chain Kroger from buying Albertsons over fears it would result in higher food prices, and challenged a merger between Tapestry and Capri, two handbag producers, to promote competition in the “accessible luxury” market. In 2022, the Justice Department blocked the publishing giant Penguin Random House from buying Simon and Schuster.
The agencies were not always successful in court. The F.T.C. tried and failed to block Meta from buying a virtual reality startup and could not stop Microsoft from buying Activision, the video game publisher. The Justice Department lost a challenge to UnitedHealth Group’s purchase of a company that helps process insurance claims.
Many industry groups accused the regulators of stifling deals that were good for consumers and expressed hope that the next administration would take a different approach. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in July that the next president should present an “an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to, to be even better.”
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