By Josh Wright
It does not take more than a rudimentary understanding of economics to know that competition improves Americans’ lives. Competition results in lower prices and higher quality. It spurs companies to create products and innovate.
Allowing competition to thrive and winning firms to enjoy the fruits of their success without turning on them is the secret sauce distinguishing the American experience from its European counterparts. The results are clear. Americans enjoy greater economic growth, innovation and prosperity.
As a former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, I understand the value of fostering a regulatory environment that encourages healthy competition.
The antitrust agencies — the FTC and the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice — are one edge of the sword protecting competition. Recent appointments to those jobs, including Andrew Ferguson as the FTC’s chairman and Gail Slater at the Antitrust Division, are well-qualified to enforce the antitrust laws aggressively and to hold accountable firms attempting to thwart competition.
The second edge of the sword — deregulation — is less often discussed but equally important. You have heard about the FTC and Justice, but did you know there are more than 100 sections of the U.S. Code that empower dozens upon dozens of federal agencies responsible for protecting competition?
For example, the Surface Transportation Board, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Reserve, Transportation Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Comptroller of the Currency are assigned merger authority. Federal agencies run into each other, often working against each other. New entrants are buried under compliance costs with multiple agencies.
The regulatory landscape is smothering competition, not enabling it.
The Trump administration understands that competition is the key to American economic success and that unleashing its potential requires us to fight with both edges of the sword. The Biden administration left some tools that might be useful. Early in his term, President Biden established the White House Competition Council by executive order to implement a “whole-of-government” approach to antitrust regulatory policy. The idea was a good one.
The Competition Council could have made someone accountable for ensuring the dozens of federal agencies affecting competition were furthering the president’s competition policy, not unwittingly working against it. It failed in practice because it focused only on the enforcement edge of the sword.
The Trump FTC and Justice Department are positioned to enforce the antitrust laws aggressively. That edge of the sword is sharpened and ready for battle.
But what about the other side? The Biden Competition Council disregarded mandates to undo regulations that served as barriers to entry or hindered competition. The Trump administration should not make the same mistake. Instead, it should rewrite the executive order to fit Trump’s vision for competition policy and use the Competition Council as a tool in the fight for deregulation.
Trump has already shown how much he values both edges of the competition sword. Ferguson and Slater are positioned to police abuses of the antitrust laws. Concerning deregulation, Trump just released a new executive order, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation,” that requires federal agencies to eliminate 10 regulations for each new regulation added. Between the new 1-in, 10-out order, the administration’s commitment to greasing the tracks for competition and innovation through enforcement and deregulation is strong.
Wielding both edges of the sword requires a difficult balancing act. The Biden administration failed that balancing act and harmed Americans with regulatory and bureaucratic excess that choked off competition. The lessons to be learned are that specialization matters and that cheap talk is not enough to get the job done.
Let the enforcers police antitrust violations aggressively.
Reimagined to fit a vision of unleashing prosperity through deregulation and eliminating barriers to competition, the “whole-of-government” competition policy provides a powerful tool to achieve those goals and lead America into another great century.
Josh Wright is the founder of Lodestar Law and Economics and a former Federal Trade Commissioner. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Censational Market.
