The FTC may want the law to be different than it is, but this is not the place to start.
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The FTC's citations to the contrary, see Mot. 17, are completely off point. Qualcomm is not a merger case at all, and Warner and Whole Foods involved horizontal mergers, where the "combin[ing] operations" often means closing stores, factories, and other redundant assets that may be impossible to reconstitute if the merger is later found unlawful.