When import competition is strong, domestic mergers can strengthen the incentives to seek trade protection. While intense foreign competition may support merger clearance under current practice, existing enforcement does not consider how mergers alter the merging parties’ incentives to petition for tariffs against those imports. I develop a model to characterize the trade-policy channel of mergers: the effect on consumers that operates through tariff petitions. Mergers between domestic producers increase the merging parties’ incentives to petition for tariffs and can generate additional consumer harm from tariffs, whereas cross-border mergers are unlikely to have this effect. I apply the framework to the Whirlpool–Maytag merger in the U.S. washer market and show that the merger substantially amplified the profitability of tariffs for Whirlpool, resulting in consumer harm via the trade-policy channel that is comparable in magnitude to the direct harm from increased market power.
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