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If there’s one thing a second Donald Trump presidency guarantees, especially if there’s a red sweep in Congress — it’s a healthy flow of restructurings and some dramatic regulatory, and potentially legislative, change. But the immediate impact is muted, mainly because we’ve already been here before. Of course, there’s talk of tariffs, then maybe inflationary concerns in terms of labor with a stricter border policy, then it’s surely “drill baby drill” for any traditional energy companies and bad for renewables, and there is the continued expectation that rates will go lower. But so far, there are echoes of the last Trump administration that still linger and make this coming one seem not as uncertain.

On the deregulation point, one deal that could provide insight into how the Trump administration views M&A and antitrust enforcement is satellite TV provider DIRECTV’s proposed acquisition of competitor DISH Network. We’ve written about the potential antitrust pitfalls that could scuttle a deal, but many suspect that a Republican administration would be more merger-friendly than the current one. Though merger enforcement activity under the Biden administration was at a historic low, according to a report published by Westlaw Today, under Lina Khan the FTC launched ambitious antitrust cases and slowed down dealmaking, as industry professionals opined to 9fin, they expect regulatory oversight to ease under Trump.