Competition Policy & Antitrust
Competition Policy & Antitrust
While trade policy is critical to opening markets, competition policy and antitrust enforcement are essential to creating competitive markets. The growth in new enforcement agencies has resulted in complications in clearing merger transactions and has ushered in divergent views on how best to protect competition in the marketplace, including the misguided notion that protecting competition means protecting competitors.
The GRC’s International Competition Policy Working Group (ICPWG) promotes the following ideals:
• Competition and trade policy are complementary. The benefits of international trade will be lost if markets do not operate in pro-competitive ways.
• Governments should not use competition policy as an industrial policy tool to achieve protectionist goals that circumvent commitments to trade and open markets.
• Antitrust enforcement should be transparent, predictable, reasonably stable over time, and consistent across jurisdictions.
• All antitrust investigations and enforcement decisions should be based on sound economic analysis.
• Competition policy should protect legitimate property rights, including intangible property.
• Antitrust remedies should enhance consumer welfare and make sense in an interconnected world.
• Due process is critical in any antitrust investigation.
• Competition policy and antitrust enforcement should apply equivalent tests to both private firms and state-owned companies.
• Without better cooperation among international regulators, divergent approaches to competition policy will subvert the goal of creating open and competitive markets.