Antitrust
The consumer welfare standard, which maximizes consumer benefits instead of protecting individual competitors in the market, has been the north star of antitrust policy for over four decades. Antitrust law under the consumer welfare standard is primarily focused benefiting consumers and strengthening the competitive process, not to protect companies from being outperformed by other firms. This objective, rule-of-law approach has protected American innovation and brought consistency to antitrust enforcement.
The left – and unfortunately some on the right – want to nullify the consumer welfare standard in favor of a more activist, interventionist approach to antitrust enforcement. Their ultimate goal is to use antitrust law to address unrelated social goals and “break up” big companies. Overzealous regulators would target large companies no matter how much they improve American lives or compete fairly with other firms. This would have a chilling effect on free enterprise, crush American innovation, and give activist bureaucrats license to fundamentally reshape the American economy. OCC opposes any and all efforts to weaken or overturn the consumer welfare standard, and stands firm against attempts to use antitrust law to reshape the economy.
We will also oppose proposals such as aggressive merger prohibitions, inverting the burden of proof, allowing collusion and antitrust exemptions for politically favored firms, and politicizing antitrust enforcement decision-making more generally. Arbitrary or overly broad antitrust enforcement will impede economic recovery and risks job losses—something we should not exacerbate as the nation recovers from economic hardships and adapts to evolving market dynamics and changing consumer needs resulting from the global pandemic.
Antitrust
Voters Don’t Buy That OAMA Will Boost App Store Competition
As time goes on, it is becoming increasingly clear that ordinary Americans lack enthusiasm for greater regulation of American tech companies. According to recent polls conducted by Morning Consult/ Politico, only two provisions of the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) — “preventing app stores from self-preferencing their own…
Antitrust
FTC Abandons Consumer Welfare Standard With Latest Lina Khan Edict
According to media reports, Lina Khan’s FTC intends to make “make wider use of its 1914 founding statute to police anticompetitive behavior by companies in the internet age.” At first glance, increased antitrust enforcement against anticompetitive behavior does not seem objectionable. However, a deeper dive into the FTC’s latest policy…
Antitrust
News Flash to Lina Khan: Meta is No Monopoly
According to the FTC’s summary of their case against Meta, the principal justification for their legal action against the supposed ‘tech giant’ is that “the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.” While this claim may seem credible to laymen, those…
Antitrust
New Punchbowl News Poll: Klobuchar Antitrust Bill “Isn’t Terribly Popular”
The House passed the “Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act” (H.R. 3843) last week, legislation that would raise fees on larger companies engaging in M&A activity and prohibit companies from requesting a venue change when a state attorney general brings an antitrust suit. Lawmakers who’ve been pushing for another bill, the…
Antitrust
FTC’s Politically Motivated Pursuit of Meta-Within Acquisition Gets Stranger
Not even Netflix’s Stranger Things has managed to construe odder narrative developments than the ones unfolding from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) pursuit of a meritless lawsuit against Meta. This week, a report came out that Meta found out about FTC’s lawsuit against them from Twitter. The lack of warning before filing…
Antitrust
Cornyn Says Antitrust Bill Will Never Reach Senate Floor
In an interview, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that the “American Innovation and Choice Online Act” will never make it to the Senate floor. Despite Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s strident protestations to the contrary, it is becoming increasingly clear that the bill just does not have nearly enough support to get across the…
Antitrust
FTC Chair Khan Undermines Agency Staff Again with Reliance on Unpaid Experts
Lina Khan’s tenure as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been a string of disasters. Every time a new report comes out about Khan’s blatant disregard for agency procedures, it becomes even more difficult to believe that Khan’s FTC could be any worse. Yet, an FTC Inspector General…
Antitrust
China-Backed TikTok Destroys DOJ Narrative by Emerging as Strong Competitor to Google
In an forthcoming antitrust suit against Google, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to depict the company as having such an overbearing market share in the search engine industry that they are preventing competitors from entering the market. As both parties are accumulating evidence, the evolving rise of China-backed…
Antitrust
Klobuchar Admits That There Will Be No Vote on Her Pet Project This Summer
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and co-sponsors of her pet project, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, have spent the past summer wishcasting support for the bill. At the same time, they held out hope that Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would follow through on his alleged promise to put the…
Antitrust
FTC Chair Khan Ignores Experts in Pursuit of Politically Motivated Suit Against Meta
Since President Biden appointed radical academic Lina Khan as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, she has embarked on an ambitious, aggressive agenda to weaponize antitrust law against big businesses solely for the sin of being successful. In pursuit of this agenda, Khan has torn away at the independence and…