Today, Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), together with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), introduced the “Anticompetitive Exclusionary Conduct Prevention Act of 2020.” The bill would reform the antitrust laws by correcting recent harmful legal decisions that have wrongly narrowed antitrust law. Public Knowledge applauds Sens. Klobuchar, Blumenthal, and Booker for their leadership on improving antitrust law to protect consumers and small businesses from overreach when large corporations abuse their power.
The following can be attributed to Charlotte Slaiman, Competition Policy Director at Public Knowledge:
“For far too long, antitrust enforcers have been fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. This legislation will revitalize antitrust enforcement in exclusionary conduct cases by sharpening the tools of our antitrust agencies. Exclusionary conduct — efforts to exclude competitors from the market such as long-term exclusive contracts and refusals to deal fairly with competitors — hurts competition and consumers by putting efficient competitors out of business. This harm to competition means less entrepreneurship, less innovation, higher prices for consumers, lower quality products and services, and less consumer choice. We commend this effort to address the problem of exclusionary conduct to ensure these competitive harms do not escape scrutiny.”
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