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Charter, one of the country’s biggest cable and broadband companies, is buying Cox, a smaller cable and broadband company.
If you’re a customer of either company, you might be vaguely interested in what the deal means for you. And what might you think if you’re the president of the United States?
Well, Charter is hoping you’ll think this is a deal that Makes America Great Again.
It’s a real sign of the times in the Trump 2.0 Era: A pretty standard proposed merger is being framed as an explicitly pro-American deal.
But don’t take my word for it. Consult Charter’s press release, which says the deal will produce “powerful benefits for American employees, customers, communities, and shareholders.”
Charter also promises the deal will “deliver high-value products that save American families money, and we’ll onshore jobs from overseas to create new, good-paying careers for US employees.”
And in case you didn’t pick up on it the first two times, Charter is happy to underline the point. It says this deal “puts America first by returning jobs from overseas and creating new, good-paying customer service and sales careers.”
Charter is also happy to say the same thing in reverse: It says this deal is bad for bad people who don’t live in America. “The combined company will retain its industry leadership in protecting the security of US communications networks from foreign threats,” the company says.
The responsible, fair-minded journalist in me needs to note that at least one part of the Charter pitch doesn’t seem to be constructed solely for President Donald Trump’s benefit: Charter has previously pushed to bring customer service jobs it used to outsource in other countries back to America.
That was something Trump liked hearing from Charter the first time he was in office — even if it was about plans Charter had made before Trump’s election.
Fine. And it’s certainly not unusual for big companies to frame M&A deals in a way that’s explicitly meant to please politicians and regulators. But those pitches were usually about whether those deals would reduce competition (standard line for any old-world company buying another: “We need to do this to take on Big Tech.”)
This is… very different. We also have no idea if it will work: The Trump 2.0 era has been pretty scattershot in terms of what kind of deals clear antitrust or other regulatory bars, and which ones get opposed.
But at a minimum, it’s raising eyebrows. “It’s a MAGA press release,” someone at a Charter competitor muttered to me Friday. Left unsaid: Maybe that’s a good approach?
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