Before the new year, Netflix announced it would acquire significant portions of Warner Bros. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some policymakers and commentators have already rushed to claim such a transaction would be bad for consumers and lead to harmful industry concentration — or even market dominance by a single firm.

They should take a step back before rushing to judgment. Such transactions are supposed to be carefully analyzed, not condemned off the bat. The focus of U.S. antitrust law is a transaction’s effect on consumers and not, as is too often the concern of commentators, the welfare of competitors in the market. As regulators analyze the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal, an objective, consumer-focused approach should guide their considerations.

But it might not, especially given the heightened scrutiny of acquisitions by large companies over the past few years. This transaction will almost certainly trigger scrutiny under the 2023 Merger Guidelines, which determine which mergers and acquisitions are presumed to have anticompetitive effects by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission. The 2023 version of the merger guidelines is far more focused on structural aspects, such as market concentration, than the previous version. This approach could increase the agencies’ skepticism of acquisitions and deter or prevent mergers that would actually benefit consumers. The result is that government bureaucrats get their preferred market structure, but the public consumer loses out.

Like many other discussions in the tech........

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