Competition law

And here, unfortunately...

One of the very best people in the Trump administration was the first person fired, and that's Gail Slater at Antitrust.

And it's because she had the cardinal sin of actually going after some non-competitive environments that are trying to break these things up.

And obviously, the lobbyist money got to her really fast.

Welcome to Season 6 of the In Conversation with IPR and Competition Law podcast.

I'm your host, Sanya Basna, a competition law enthusiast and co-founder of legal tech product, Justice Lab.

Today, we have the privilege of hosting Ms. Similene Maseko, the Chief Executive Officer of Estimony Competition Commission.

Ms. Maseko brings with her more than a decade of experience in competition law and economic regulation.

She began her career at the Stephanie Competition Commission in 2011 in its Merger and Acquisition Division.

Before, spending over eight years with Comissa Competition Commission, where she rose to the Principal Analyst and also served as the Acting Manager in the Enforcement and Exemptions Division.

She returned to Estibany in 2024 as Director of Competition and Consumer Protection before being appointed as the CEO of the Estibany Competition Commission in March 2026.

Today, we'll discuss her professional journey, the ESCC's approach to merger control, cartel enforcement, and consumer protection, the challenges of regulating competition in a small and concentrated economy, and the future of competition law in Estonia.

But we also love to talk here about what's going on behind the scenes, and so many of our listeners don't always know much about what's going on behind the scenes.

We've had producers on before kinda say like, "What is a Broadway producer and what the inner workings of?" So I figured it would be great to kinda just dive in and maybe clarify from your perspective, and give us like the one, two, three on what is antitrust law in a nutshell? Maybe we start-

Of course

[laughs]

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um, uh, antitrust law has been around since the 1890s, 1890 in fact, with, uh, when the Congress passed the Sherman Act.

Sherman Act antitrust law has been amended a few times, but it's really three simple things.

Yeah, hopefully we see some more research in this space too.

Finally, to end things off, what would be your message to competition lawyers, particularly those in private practice, about why this topic, specifically gender-inclusive competition law, should matter to them in their day-to-day work?

Yeah, great question.

So I think gender analysis should matter to competition lawyers because desegregated data can uncover hidden consumer harms.

It can show varying price sensitivities between different groups of people.

in the cartel space like there might be different risks and those are things that your traditional neutral economic models would often miss so gendered analysis can help you as a lawyer better understand if some consumers see products as substitutes or complements it can help you understand that price sensitivity and switching behaviors and like gendered analysis can help you design remedies that fix specific market behaviors that might impact some groups more than others, rather than that one size fits all assumptions that may not actually work.

... incredible.

The, uh, Sherman Antitrust Act, with which I know you're familiar-

Of course

... basically says any contract or combination restraint of interstate trade for a commercial purpose is unlawful.

I raise my voice for a commercial purpose because the Department of Justice, under the Trump sycophant, who is the attorney general, Trump's former personal lawyer in his, one of his criminal cases, is now investigating CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox because they all agreed to stop covering the White House while three of them were banned from covering the White House, and the DOJ claims that this decision was somehow a criminal violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

To me, this is a profound attack on the freedom of the press-

Of course

When CNN was removed from its spot in the television press pool, the networks then acted.

In a statement to the Times, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Covington wrote, "Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act, a core antitrust law.

The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust law." Representatives for the five networks did not comment.

Joining us now, Mary McCord, MSNow legal analyst, former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, and co-host of the Main Justice podcast, and Andrew Weissmann, MSNow legal analyst and author of Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America.

Good morning to you both.

... uh, specific cases.

So, uh, you wrote, uh, with your, uh, colleague, uh, Joseph Coniglio, a piece called, uh, Antitrust Overreach Comes to Zillow.

Uh, as, as a frequent, uh, fantasy real estate shopper-

[laughs]

And I would say this is the truth before KBJ.

that everyone that was replaced even by a democratic president moved the court to the right and she wasn't talking on social issues she was talking on a pro-corporate agenda and on the appellate level up until biden it was undoubtedly so um yes and this affects things like Anti-trust, which we'll get into.

You got you highlight one of the judges in your piece about that.

But on a 30,000 foot level, like how many government initiatives to provide material benefits from people? Student loan, you know, deferment or forgiveness, expansion of Medicaid.