Trump Is Ready to Bless Monsanto and Bayer's Massive Merger

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/01/monsanto-bayer-trump-antitrust


Trump Is Ready to Bless Monsanto and Bayer's Massive Merger
Based on the flimsiest jobs pledge ever.

Tom Philpott
Jan. 19, 2017 6:00 AM


Not even sworn in yet, President-elect Donald Trump is already negotiating the terms for green-lighting what Bloomberg News calls the globe's "biggest-ever" merger of agribusiness companies—a move antitrust experts say is highly irregular.

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Bayer and Monsanto, for their part, issued a joint statement describing their CEOs' "very productive meeting last week with President-Elect Trump and his team." They made no specific pledges on jobs but did note that the "combined company expects to spend approximately $16 billion for R&D in agriculture over the next six years with at least half of this investment made in the United States," an investment that "will create several thousand new high-tech, well-paying jobs after integration is complete."

If Trump really does bless the merger based on a jobs pledge, dismissing antitrust concerns, it would "signal a fundamental disregard for the law and for due process," Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute, told me. "Antitrust enforcers play the important role of referee in protecting competition and our market system," she added. "If Trump lets this deal through without any review, it would be unusual and would raise significant concerns."

According to Barry Lynn, director of the Open Markets at the New America and author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, a combined Bayer-Monsanto would likely "pay for those jobs by ripping off American farmers, hence American eaters," by leveraging their market power to raise prices. If the jobs deal pans out, he added, "Trump's team is selling out the long term interests of the United States."

And then there's the whole question of what exactly Monsanto and Bayer are promising to deliver. As CNBC's Meg Tirrell notes, the companies had already announced plans, way back when they agreed to merge in September, to keep the combined company's Seeds & Traits division, as well as its main North American headquarters, in Monsanto's hometown, St. Louis.

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http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/01/monsanto-bayer-trump-antitrust

[Phoenix61]

1. Makes perfect sense

Monsanto can make us sick then Bayer can cure us.