If US antitrust policymakers aren't careful, their actions could toss out the baby of American innovation with the bathwater of potential anti-competitive practices. We must balance how the US economy actually functions and the dynamics of how our firms and workers compete with foreign counterparts.
Almost any change in economic activity produces benefits and costs and thus winners and losers. This is true in this case. While certain firms in particular sectors have grown larger, occupy greater market share, and engendered job losses, they have also created new jobs as well as invented new products and services.
Decades ago in some quarters there was a belief that adherence, if not a return, to a “small is beautiful” economy might have been feasible. It is not at all clear today—even if such a goal were desired—that it would make us better off. There is a strong chance it would worsen our lot in life. ” and his placement or nomination of key antitrust officials unmistakably tell us a lot about the type of competition policy he wants his administration to adopt and enforce: an activist one.
The Order could prove to be beneficial in helping to stimulate competition in certain industries and markets in the U.S.; yet it may well also inflict harm. The key is that policymakers—in the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and both at the federal and state levels—need to fully assess the economic and social benefits and costs of applying “remedies” to industries they believe are anticompetitive before any kind of policy decisions are taken.