Justice Dept. Investigates California Emissions Pact That Embarrassed Trump – The New York Times

“These are four car companies standing in the way of something the president wants to do,” Mr. Revesz said. “Now the enormous prosecutorial power of the federal government is brought to bear against them. This should make any large companies very nervous.”

He said the Justice Department investigation was surprising because the agreement between California and the auto companies has not yet been signed or legally formalized. “It is extremely unusual for a prosecutor to investigate a deal that hasn’t even been signed,” Mr. Revesz said.

Ankur Kapoor, an antitrust expert at the law firm Constantine Cannon, said it was also unusual for the federal government to investigate a matter involving competition among companies that is overseen by a state. “If it’s a state matter, actively supervised by a state, it should be immune from federal antitrust laws,” he said.

Myron Ebell, who led the administration’s E.P.A. transition team and who now leads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded research organization, said antitrust laws were often used as a “shot across the bow to get the attention of corporations.”

“The antitrust statutes give the government quite a lot of power to threaten companies with anticollusion charges,” Mr. Ebell said, “and they’re going to go ahead and use it.”

The investigation appears to have already had an effect. Another company, Mercedes-Benz, had been poised to join the California agreement. But after the German government learned of the federal investigation into the other companies that had signed on, it warned Mercedes not to join, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously about it because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.