Antitrust Laws
Critically important but commonly misunderstood, antitrust laws are meant to promote competition and protect consumers. Here’s everything you need to know.
America's antitrust laws protect competition and benefit consumers.
Antitrust laws ensure competition in a free and open market economy, which is the foundation of any vibrant economy. And healthy competition among sellers in an open marketplace gives consumers the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation.
The core of U.S. antitrust law was created by three pieces of legislation: the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Clayton Antitrust Act. These laws have evolved along with the market, vigilantly guarding against anti-competitive harm that arises from abuse of dominance, bid rigging, price fixing, and customer allocation.
America's Antitrust Laws: Explained in 60 Seconds
Video
Antitrust laws ensure competition thrives, providing consumers with lower prices and higher-quality products and services. However, some seek to rewrite these laws and undermine consumer power in the marketplace. Before Congress starts making unnecessary and harmful changes, it’s important to set a few things straight.
Learn More
Sign Up
Sign up to receive the latest news, resources, and event updates related to antitrust.
Latest Content
- Nov 11, 20202. By rule or statute, non-compete agreements should be made presumptively unlawful; Commentary: There is a bigger question as to whether this is even an issue for antitrust. It could be argued that this is better addressed as a matter of contract law or labor law and regulations that support those laws. But let’s play along and assume that antitrust has some role here. The only absolute violation in antirust is cartel behavior—everything else is governed by, you guessed it, the rule of reason. As noted above, the rule of reason makes no presumptions either way.
- Nov 09, 2020The Utah Statement Commentary: What is the Utah Statement? Critics of antitrust have been tough to pin down, they have often spoken in grand and emotionally loaded terms, leveled vague criticisms, all while being cagey about what they really want. Last year, following an antitrust conference in Utah last year, they finally responded with clarity over what they seek to accomplish. One can draw a straight line from this statement to the House staff antitrust report released nearly a year later. The Utah Statement lays out the path to dangerously overhaul America’s antitrust laws, seeking to remove the important role of economic analysis in antitrust enforcement and incorporate multiple political and regulatory goals into antitrust. This is essentially a “Swiss-Army” knife approach to a field that has succeeded largely because it is carefully focused on the single over-arching goal of protecting the dynamic competitive process. Citation: https://onezero.medium.com/the-utah-statement-reviving-antimonopoly-traditions-for-the-era-of-big-tech-e6be198012d7
- Oct 06, 2020U.S. Chamber Calls Antitrust Report a Deeply Flawed Basis for Any Legislative Conversation “It is a flawed premise that our antitrust laws no longer work and that the outcome in the market is better guided by government, not consumers. Any contemplated changes to our antitrust laws will impact all sectors of our economy. We urge members of Congress to refrain from relying on this one-sided staff report to guide future legislation.”
- Jul 29, 2020U.S. Chamber Strongly Believes Consumers Need to Remain at the Heart of Antitrust Laws U.S. Chamber Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley issued the following statement in response to today’s House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on online platforms and market power.
- Mar 10, 2020U.S. Chamber Comments Regarding Non-Compete Clauses Used in Employment Contracts Comments to the Federal Trade Commission in response to the FTC’s request for comment regarding employers’ use of non-compete agreements.
Jul 20, 2018Five Things European Antitrust Gets Wrong The relationship between antitrust and innovation is complex.
Jun 28, 2017A Closer Look at the EU’s $2.7 Billion Swipe at Google There are reasons for concern with this decision.- May 02, 2017Adherence to ICN Guidance on Investigative Process: A Practitioner Survey For the fourth consecutive year a practitioner survey has been conducted to solicit feedback intended to better inform competition authorities and the International Competition Network (ICN) of the views and experiences practitioners have when working with their respective competition authority. Earlier surveys supported the work of the ICN’s Investigative Process Project as part of the Agency Effectiveness Working Group as well as the ICN’s Recommended Practices for Merger Notification and Review Procedures.