United States antitrust law: Difference between revisions

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Antitrust is also the name for a movie, see Antitrust (film)

Antitrust or competition laws are laws which seek to promote economic and business competition by prohibiting anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Government agencies known as competition regulators regulate antitrust laws, and may also be responsible for regulating related laws dealing with consumer protection.

The term "antitrust" derives from the U.S. law which was originally formulated to combat "business trusts", now more commonly known as cartels. Other countries use the term "competition law". Many countries including most of the Western world have antitrust laws of some form. For example the European Union has its own competition law.

Prohibited anti-competitive behavior

A business with a monopoly over certain products or services may be in violation of antitrust laws if it has abused its dominant position or market power. Although not all anti-competitive behavior which is subject to antitrust laws involve illegal cartels or trusts, the following types of activity are generally prohibited.

Consumer protection

Consumer protection laws seek to regulate certain aspects of the commercial relationship between consumers and business, such as by requiring minimum standards of product quality, requiring the disclosure of certain details about a product or service (eg. with regard to cost, or implied warranties), or prescribing financial compensation for product liability.

History of antitrust in the United States

The antitrust laws comprise what the Supreme Court calls a "charter of freedom," designed to protect the core republican values regarding free enterprise in America. The main goal was never to protect consumers, but to prohibit the use of power to control the marketplace. Although "trust" had a technical legal meaning, the word was commonly used to denote big business, especially a large, growing manufacturing conglomerate of the sort that suddenly emerged in great numbers in the 1880s and 1890s. Indeed, at this time hundreds of small short-line railroads were being bought up and consolidated into giant systems. (Separate laws and policies emerged regarding railroads and financial concerns such as banks and insurance companies.) Republicanism required free competition and the opportunity for Americans to build their own businesses without being forced to sell out to an economic colossus. As Senator John Sherman put it, "If we will not endure a king as a political power we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life." The Sherman Antitrust Act passed Congress almost unanimously in 1890. and remains the core of antitrust policy. The Act makes it illegal to try to restrain trade, or to form a monopoly. It gives the Justice Department the mandate to go to federal court for orders to stop illegal behavior or to impose remedies.

Business consolidation roared along in the 1890s and 1900s. As a result the Progressive Era put anti-trust high on the agenda. President Theodore Roosevelt sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act, while William Howard Taft sued 75. In 1902, Roosevelt stopped the formation of the Northern Securities Company which threatened to monopolize transportation in the northwest.

The most notorious of the trusts was the Standard Oil Company; John D. Rockefeller in the 1870s and 1880s had used economic threats against competitors and secret rebate deals with railroads to build what was called a monopoly in the oil business, although in fact he always had nominal competition. In 1911 the Supreme Court broke the monopoly into separate companies that competed with one another, including Standard Oil of New Jersey (later known as Exxon and now ExxonMobil), Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco), Standard Oil Company of New York (Mobil, again, later merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil), of California (Chevron), and so on. In approving the breakup the Supreme Court added the "rule of reason": not all big companies, and not all monopolies, are evil. They had to somehow damage the economic environment of their competitors. In fact however Standard Oil had reduced the price of oil by over 90% in fact so it's hard to see what "damage" it did.

Roosevelt for his part distinguished between "good trusts" and bad ones allegedly on the basis of their contribution to the economy. In the words of Isabel Paterson "As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.". Such arbitrariness gives business leaders reason to believe that they will be prosecuted if they do not cultivate political support for their business.

United States Steel Corporation, which was much larger than Standard Oil, won its antitrust suit in 1920 despite never having delivered the benefits to consumers that Standard Oil did. In fact it lobbied for tariff protection that reduced competition and so contending that it was one of the "good trusts" that benefitted the economy is someone doubtful. Likewise International Harvester survived its court test, while other trusts were broken up in tobacco, meatpacking, and bathtub fixtures. Over the years hundreds of executives of competing companies who met together illegally to fix prices went to federal prison.

One problem under the Sherman Act was that businessmen did not know what was allowed or not. Therefore in 1914 Congress passed the Clayton Act which prohibited specific business actions (such as price discrimination, tie-in sales, exclusive dealership agreements, mergers, acquisitions, and interlocking corporate directorships) if they substantially lessened competition. At the same time Congress established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose legal and business experts could force business to agree to "consent decrees" which provided an alternative mechanism to police anti-trust. However the law is still very unclear. For instance there is no clear definition of what constitutes a "market".

America adjusted to bigness after 1910. Henry Ford dominated auto manufacturing, but he built millions of cheap cars that put America on wheels, and at the same time lowered prices, raised wages, and promoted efficiency. Ford became as much of a popular hero as Rockefeller had been a villain. Welfare capitalism made large companies an attractive place to work; new career paths opened up in middle management; local suppliers discovered that big corporations were big purchasers. Talk of trust busting faded away. In the 1920s and 1930s the threat to the free enterprise system seemed to come from unrestricted cutthroat competition, which drove down prices and profits and made for inefficiency. Under the leadership of Herbert Hoover, the government in the 1920s promoted business cooperation, fostered the creation of self-policing trade associations, and made the FTC an ally of respectable business. This reduced competition and may have helped lead to the Great Depression. During the New Deal, likewise, attempts were made to stop cutthroat competition, attempts which appeared very similiar to cartelisation which would be illegal under antitrust laws if attempted by someone other than government. The National Recovery Act (NRA) was a short-lived program in 1933-35 designed to strengthen trade associations, and raise prices, profits and wages at the same time. The Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 sought to protect local retailers against the onslaught of the more efficient chain stores, by making it illegal to discount prices. To control big business the New Deal policy makers preferred federal and state regulation-- controlling the rates and telephone services provided by American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), for example--and by building up countervailing power in the form of labor unions.

By the 1970s fears of "cutthroat" competition had been displaced by confidence that a fully competitive marketplace produced fair returns to everyone. The fear was that monopoly made for higher prices, less production, inefficiency and less prosperity for all. As unions faded in strength, the government paid much more attention to the damages that unfair competition could cause to consumers, especially in terms of higher prices, poorer service, and restricted choice. However there is no evidence that antitrust prosecutions were or are dictated by the damage to consumers. It is not the policy of the antitrust division to estimate the damage to consumders and then priotise prosecutions of the basis of that damage. In 1982 the Reagan administration used the Sherman Act to break up ATT into one long-distance company and six regional "Baby Bells," arguing that competition should replace monopoly for the benefit of consumers and the economy as a whole. The pace of business takeovers quickened in the 1990s, but whenever one large corporation sought to acquire another it first had to obtain the approval of either the FTC or the Justice Department. Often the government demanded that certain subsidiaries be sold, so that the new company would not monopolize a particular geographical market. In 1999 a coalition of 19 states and the federal Justice Department sued Microsoft. A highly publicized trial demonstrated that Bill Gates--the new Rockefeller--had strong-armed many companies to squelch the competitive threat posed by the Netscape browser. In 2000 the trial court ordered Microsoft split in two to punish it, and prevent it from future misbehavior. Gates argued that Microsoft always worked on behalf of the consumer, and that splitting the company would diminish efficiency and slow down the torrid pace of software development. After this decision Microsoft's main competitor in the browser market, Netscape started charging for it's browser.

Rationale

Antitrust laws prohibit agreements in restraint of trade, monopolization and attempted monopolization, anticompetitive mergers and tie-in schemes, and, in some circumstances, price discrimination in the sale of commodities.

Efficiency-oriented economists argue that antitrust legislation should benefit consumers through reduced prices, better product diversity, and thus more choice. Furthermore, as the market power of large cartels is reduced, they are forced to pay more attention to the needs and wishes of individual customers. These economists largely ignore the political issues that motivated the laws in the first place.

Anticompetitive agreements among competitors, such as price fixing and customer and market allocation agreements, are typical types of restraints of trade proscribed by the antitrust laws. These type of conspiracies are considered pernicious to competition and are generally proscribed outright by the antitrust laws. Resale price maintenance by manufacturers is another form of agreement in restraint of trade. Other agreements that may have an impact on competition are generally evaluated using a balancing test, under which legality depends on the overall impact of the agreement.

Monopolization and attempted monopolization are offenses that may be committed by an individual firm, even without an agreement with any other enterprise. Unreasonable exclusionary practices that serve to entrench or create monopoly power can therefore be unlawful. Allegations of predatory pricing by large companies can be the basis for a monopolization claim, but it is difficult to establish the required elements of proof and. Large companies with huge cash reserves and large lines of credit can stifle competition by engaging in predatory pricing; that is, by selling their products and services at a loss for a time, in order to force their smaller competitors out of business. With no competition, they are then free to consolidate control of the industry and charge whatever prices they wish. At this point, there is also little motivation for investing in further technological research, since there are no competitors left to gain an advantage over.

High barriers to entry such as large upfront investment, notably named sunk costs, requirements in infrastructure and exclusive agreements with distributors, customers, and wholesalers ensure that it will be difficult for any new competitors to enter the market, and that if any do, the trust will have ample advance warning and time in which to either buy the competitor out, or engage in its own research and return to predatory pricing long enough to force the competitor out of business.

From an economics perspective, the relatively recent industrial organization research has focused on construction of microeconomic models that predict and/or explain the prevelance of imperfectly competitive markets and deviations from competitive behavior, partly as a response to the criticisms of antitrust laws and policies by the Chicago School and by members of the law and economics school of thought.

Criticism

Critics of anti-trust laws claim that there are two main kinds of monopolies: Those that are protected from competition by government actions and those that are not. The critics claim that the only way a monopoly can develop in a free market is by being good at satisfying market demand and that any firm is free to compete that is able to offer a better price/value ratio. Therefore, they reason that such a monopoly should not be attacked by antitrust.

The Results of "Predatory pricing": Commodity Prices from 1880-1890

Steel	↓58%
Zinc	↓20%
Sugar	↓22%

During the 1880s output of monopolistic industries grew seven times faster than the overall economy, while prices in these industries were generally falling—even faster than the 7% rate of decline that occurred in the economy as a whole. ^[1]

Free market economist Milton Friedman states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up monopolies and oligopolies and promoting more competition), but came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good and that therefore they should not exist. ^[2]

Critics also argue that the empirical evidence shows that "predatory pricing" does not work in practice, and is better defeated by a truly free market than by anti-trust laws (see Criticism of the theory of predatory pricing).

Thomas Sowell argues that even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it doesn't follow that competition has ended:

In short, the financial demise of a competitor is not the same as getting rid of competition. The courts have long paid lip service to the distinction that economists make between competition — a set of economic conditions — and existing competitors, though it is hard to see how much difference that has made in judicial decisions. Too often, it seems, if you have hurt competitors, then you have hurt competition, as far as the judges are concerned.^[3]

Alan Greenspan argues that the very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen from some activities that might be socially useful out of fear that their business actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government. In his essay entitled Antitrust, he says: "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." Those, like Greenspan, who oppose antitrust tend not to support competition as an end in itself but for its results --low prices. As long as a monopoly is not a coercive monopoly where a firm is securely insulated from potential competion, it is argued that the firm must keep prices low in order to discourage competition from arising. Hence, legal action is uncalled for, and wrongly harms the firm and consumers. ^[4]

Proponents of the Chicago school of economics are generally suspicious (and critical) of government intervention in the economy, including antitrust laws and competition policies. Judge Robert Bork's writings on antitrust law, along with those of Richard Posner and other law and economics thinkers, were heavily influential in causing a shift in the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to antitrust laws since the 1970s.

External links

Governmental

Academic

Antitrust Policy As Corporate Welfare by Clyde Wayne Crews Jr "It is hoped that policymakers will come to recognize that government cannot protect the public from monopoly power, because it is the source of such power."
Cornell University review of antitrust law
The Protectionist Roots of Antitrust by Donald J. Boudreaux and Thomas J. DiLorenzo "antitrust was a protectionist institution from the very beginning; there never was a "golden age of antitrust" besieged by rampant cartelization"

Other

The American Antitrust Institute
International Competition Network
German antitrust law
Antitrust Laws Should Be Abolished by Edward W. Younkins, 19 February 2000.
Criticism of Antitrust by Alan Greenspan
Antitrust Law: Affirmative Action for Uncompetitive Businesses by Mark Schmidt, National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Policy Paper 132, 11 Dec 2000.
The Antitrust Source, monthly analysis of antitrust issues by the American Bar Association
Antitrust by Fred S. McChesney - "The popular view that cartels and monopolies were rampant at the turn of the century now seems incorrect to most economists."

References

^ Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D (2004). The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, 99.
^ The Business Community's Suicidal Impulse by Milton Friedman A criticism of antitrust laws and cases by the Nobel economist
^ "KeepMedia: Purchase Item". Forbes. Retrieved 2005-12-23.
^ "Memo, 6-12-98; Antitrust by Alan Greenspan". Retrieved 2005-12-23.

Historical

Louis Brandeis, The Curse of Bigness (1934).
Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977).
J. Dirlam & A. Kahn, Fair Competition: The Law and Economics of Antitrust Policy (1954).
Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization 1865-1918 (1949).
Freyer, Tony. Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880-1990.(1992)
Walter Hamilton & I. Till, Antitrust in Action. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940.
Richard Hofstadter, "What Ever Happened to the Antitrust Movement?" in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. (1965).
W. Letwin, Law and Economic Policy in America: The Evolution of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1965).
Peritz, Rudolph J. R. "Three Visions of Managed Competition, 1920-1950," Antitrust Bulletin, Spring 1994 39 #1 273-287.
Edwin Rozwenc, ed. Roosevelt, Wilson and The Trusts. (1950), readings
George Stigler, The Organization of Industry (1968).
George Stocking & M. Watkins, Monopoly and Free Enterprise. ( 1951).
Hans Thorelli, The Federal Antitrust Policy: Origination of an American Tradition (1955).

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 Business consolidation roared along in the 1890s and 1900s. As a result the Progressive Era put anti-trust high on the agenda.  President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act, while [[William Howard Taft]] sued 75. In 1902, Roosevelt stopped the formation of the [[Northern Securities Company]] which threatened to monopolize transportation in the northwest.
-The most notorious of the trusts was the [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil Company]]; [[John D. Rockefeller]] in the 1870s and 1880s had used economic threats against competitors and secret rebate deals with railroads to build what was called a monopoly in the oil business, although in fact he always had competition.  The chief methods he used were undercutting prices as a result of more efficent production methods, which benefitted consumers, and buying out competitors with Standard Oil stock, which benefitted producers.  In 1911 the Supreme Court broke the monopoly into separate companies that competed with one another, including Standard Oil of New Jersey (later known as Exxon and now [[ExxonMobil]]), Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco), Standard Oil Company of New York (Mobil, again, later merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil), of California (Chevron), and so on. In approving the breakup the Supreme Court added the "rule of reason": not all big companies, and not all monopolies, are evil. They had to somehow damage the economic environment of their competitors.  In fact however Standard Oil had reduced the price of oil by over 90% in fact so it's hard to see what "damage" it did.
+The most notorious of the trusts was the [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil Company]]; [[John D. Rockefeller]] in the 1870s and 1880s had used economic threats against competitors and secret rebate deals with railroads to build what was called a monopoly in the oil business, although in fact he always had nominal competition.  In 1911 the Supreme Court broke the monopoly into separate companies that competed with one another, including Standard Oil of New Jersey (later known as Exxon and now [[ExxonMobil]]), Standard Oil of Indiana (Amoco), Standard Oil Company of New York (Mobil, again, later merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil), of California (Chevron), and so on. In approving the breakup the Supreme Court added the "rule of reason": not all big companies, and not all monopolies, are evil. They had to somehow damage the economic environment of their competitors.  In fact however Standard Oil had reduced the price of oil by over 90% in fact so it's hard to see what "damage" it did.
-Roosevelt for his part distinguished between "good trusts" and bad ones allegedly on the basis of their contribution to the economy.  Murray Rothbard however has pointed out that the trusts he busted were primarily those that opposed the interests of his primary backers the Morgan banking interests.  These were strongly allied with the [[Mayer Amschel Rothschild family|Rothschilds]] who competed with [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil Company]].  Regardless of whether Rothbard's implication that the anti-trust laws were used to benefit Roosevelt's contributors is true the threat remained.  In the words of [[Isabel Paterson]] "As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.".  Such arbitrariness gives business leaders reason to believe that they will be prosecuted if they do not cultivate political support for their business.
+Roosevelt for his part distinguished between "good trusts" and bad ones allegedly on the basis of their contribution to the economy.  In the words of [[Isabel Paterson]] "As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.".  Such arbitrariness gives business leaders reason to believe that they will be prosecuted if they do not cultivate political support for their business.
 [[U.S. Steel|United States Steel Corporation]], which was much larger than Standard Oil, won its antitrust suit in 1920 despite never having delivered the benefits to consumers that Standard Oil did.  In fact it lobbied for tariff protection that reduced competition and so contending that it was one of the "good trusts" that benefitted the economy is someone doubtful.  Likewise [[International Harvester]] survived its court test, while other trusts were broken up in tobacco, meatpacking, and bathtub fixtures. Over the years hundreds of executives of competing companies who met together illegally to fix prices went to federal prison.