Word: antitrust
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Many businessmen are already mired in time-consuming antitrust cases. The Justice Department is pressing monumental cases to break up IBM and AT&T, and the FTC is doing the same in a suit against Exxon and seven other oil companies. It is unlikely that the FTC suit will come to trial much before the 21st century, by which time the Government expects oil to play a diminishing role in the nation's economy...
...antitrust largely involves traditional questions, such as whether a company conspired to fix prices, divide up markets or drive a weak competitor out of business. A commission appointed by President Carter to review antitrust laws and procedures earlier this year recommended that the standards of proof be relaxed in favor of the Government...
...Yale law professor, contended that Kennedy-Metzenbaum is symptomatic of a new anti-bigness mentality in the highest reaches of Government. Though most conference participants felt that large companies compete as ferociously and fairly as small firms, they were told by Economist Walter Adams of Michigan State University that antitrust has political as well as economic elements. Said he: "The objective of antitrust is not to promote efficiency and consumer welfare. These are only ancillary benefits that are expected to flow from economic freedom. The primary purpose of antitrust is to perpetuate and preserve, in spite of possible cost...
...most participants, the real question was: If no one can prove that bigness is bad, then why ban it? To Irving Shapiro, chairman of E.I. du Pont de Nemours, the concept amounted to "no fault antitrust." In other words, it penalized companies simply for being more successful than their competitors...
Since both the extent and the effects of industrial concentration are uncertain, most speakers favored a go-slow policy to sort out the facts before trying to enact new antitrust legislation. Said Du Pont's Shapiro: "In view of our domestic economic needs and our international competitive problems, we would do well not to go off on major, and perhaps irreversible, social experiments until there are convincing reasons...