Just one agency should enforce antitrust law

Anonymous individuals at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission have recently taken it upon themselves to leak to the media that their respective agencies will soon open investigations of the largest U.S. tech companies. Policing markets with the antitrust laws is key to ensuring that competition benefits consumers.

No industry should be free from antitrust scrutiny, including big tech. But the splitting of this tech antitrust review across two federal agencies, despite the many similar competition issues that will be investigated, illustrates the absurdity of having two federal agencies handling civil antitrust enforcement. It also shows why these investigations are likely to be less effective and coherent than they should be.

According to reports, the FTC will investigate certain conduct by Facebook and Amazon, while the Antitrust Division will look into whether Google and Apple have acted anti-competitively. These investigations will clearly cover much of the same ground. For example, Facebook and Google are both alleged to have used their market power to monopolize digital advertising. Splitting antitrust investigations of these firms between two agencies is just analytically inefficient.

Continue Reading…