subsequent laws passed by Congress were the 1914 Federal Trade
Commission Act (which created the
FTC), and the Clayton Act (which
specifies prohibited conduct related
to the Sherman Act’s ban on cartels
and monopolies). However, despite
amendments made since, American
ANALYSIS
There is a cultural divide between
US practices and what Europeans
consider ‘unrestrained’ American
capitalism. American consumers
also seem to have a higher tolerance for monopoly practice than
do Europeans. However, this has
sparked debate, as with a 2014
Corporate challenges to US
anti-trust legislation have even
gone before the Supreme Court.
anti-trust law remains essentially a
relic from the Model-T Ford era.
This helps explain differences with
the EU’s approach.
Corporate challenges to US antitrust legislation have even gone
before the Supreme Court. This
indicates another factor distinguishing American anti-trust law. Since
the courts can adjudicate, European-style strong federal control is
limited. This has meant that corporate challenges to such legislation
have also been exerted through
politics and well-funded lobbyists. A
certain semantic aspect also makes
US anti-trust legislation more malleable than European: as the FTC
notes, “the Supreme Court decided
that the Sherman Act does not
prohibit every restraint of trade,
only those that are unreasonable…
an agreement between two individuals to form a partnership restrains
trade, but may not do so unreasonably, and thus may be lawful under
the antitrust laws.” In addition,
most states have their own antitrust laws, enforced by local courts.
Where the Two Collide:
Differing Conceptions of
Trusts and their Effects
The EU’s more unique conception
of anti-trust legislation has often
left American businessmen fuming.
New Yorker article about telecom
giant Comcast’s desire to buy rival
Time-Warner, which would create
a virtual monopoly in many areas,
affecting consumer broadband pricing. The magazine noted that EU
consumers get better prices and
broadband speed due to their regulatory practices.
“Why are things so different, and
so expensive, in the United States?”
mused the New Yorker. “There are
various answers, but by far the
This example indicates that European consumer assumptions about
regulators’ role in protecting consumers are quite different across
the Atlantic. Unsurprisingly, American executives would generally not
like to see a shift toward the EU
approach. A recent op-ed in the
Huffington Post exemplified this
attitude, in discussing the EU case
against Google.
Google may have manipulated
search results, the EU argues, to
the detriment of other online companies. The article dismisses this
as “just the last episode of a war
waged many years ago by European
authorities against the U.S. hightech giants.”4 Beyond the issues of
‘unfair’ dominance in search and
publishing, the Google debate in
Italy involved a possible "Google
Tax" law, stipulating that “services
and products sold over the Internet
can only be purchased by companies with a VAT account registered
in Italy.” While similar sentiment
can be found in other EU states,
legislation has not yet appeared.
There is a cultural divide between US
practices and what Europeans consider
‘unrestrained’ American capitalism.
most important ones are competition and competition policy. In
countries like the U.K., regulators
forced incumbent cable and telephone operators to lease their
networks to competitors at cost,
which enabled new providers to
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