Today, ACI joined a group of organizations and prominent scholars to warn Congress not to change the current consumer welfare standard for conducting antitrust enforcement. That standard tests whether consumers benefit or lose from changes in market efficiency, quality and price, and it is used to determine if antitrust actions are needed.
Today’s coalition letter explains that eliminating the consumer welfare standard, as proposed by some on both sides of the aisle, would enable antitrust regulators target and punish businesses with whom they disagree or out of a flawed presupposition that big is necessarily bad.
The letter is available online.