The FTC Knows It When It Sees It

By: Ramsi Woodcock (Truth on The Market)

[This post is a contribution to Truth on the Market‘s continuing digital symposium “FTC Rulemaking on Unfair Methods of Competition.” You can find other posts at the symposium page here. Truth on the Market also invites academics, practitioners, and other antitrust/regulation commentators to send us 1,500-4,000 word responses for potential inclusion in the symposium.]

When Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914, it charged the agency with condemning “unfair methods of competition.” That’s not the language Congress used in writing America’s primary antitrust statute, the Sherman Act, which prohibits “monopoliz[ation]” and “restraint[s] of trade.”

Ever since, the question has lingered whether the FTC has the authority to go beyond the Sherman Act to condemn conduct that is unfair, but not necessarily monopolizing or trade-restraining.

According to a new policy statement, the FTC’s current leadership seems to think that the answer is “yes.” But the peculiar strand of progressivism that is currently running the agency lacks the intellectual foundation needed to tell us what conduct that is unfair but not monopolizing might actually be—and misses an opportunity to bring about an expansion of its powers that courts might actually accept.

Better to Keep the Rule of Reason but Eliminate the Monopoly-Power Requirement

The FTC’s policy statement reads like a thesaurus. What is unfair competition? Answer: conduct that is “coercive, exploitative, collusive, abusive, deceptive, predatory, or involve[s] the use of economic power of a similar nature.”

In other words: the FTC has no idea. Presumably, the agency thinks, like Justice Potter Stewart did of obscenity, it will know it when it sees it. Given the courts’ long history of humiliating the FTC by rejecting its cases, even when the agency is able to provide a highly developed account of why challenged conduct is bad for America, one shudders to think of the reception such an approach to fairness will receive…

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