With One Move, New York Cuts Sprint and T-Mobile Down to Size

...

But President Trump and Mr. Son had made a giant miscalculation, one the business press also missed. They forgot about the states.

This week, nine states and the District of Columbia, led by New York's attorney general, Letitia James, filed suit in federal court in New York to block the merger... if the states win in court, as they seem likely to, the merger is dead. Inadvertently, this corporate blunder has created a new role for the states in merger review: acting as a backstop in cases of gross dereliction of duty by the federal government.

...

Companies tend to act in their financial self-interest, and where there is less competition, they feel much less need to invest money to keep customers (ask your local cable company). And internal documents, referred to in a partly redacted complaint filed as part of the lawsuit, appear to confirm that the carriers saw the merger less as an opportunity to do battle with China (always an unclear mission for a domestic phone company) but rather as an opportunity to raise prices. The companies' own economists predict the merger will cost subscribers at least $4.5 billion a year.