The Case for Revision of Section 7 of the Clayton Act

Section 7 of the Clayton Act, the basic antitrust law affecting mergers, today fails to promote competition and consumer welfare. Reasoned and moderate reforms which eliminate ambiguity will return the antitrust laws to their basic goals of promoting competition, efficiency, and consumer well-being. Enforcement practices since the 1950s have been preoccupied with local or regional market concentration. But international competition has accelerated dramatically, and enforcers have failed to take market changes into account. Merger laws also are abused by competitors who would use the law not to promote competition in the industry but to preserve their own market share. Proposed reforms are reasoned and moderate and will not gut the antitrust laws or give license to greedy monopolists. The Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification requirements remain in place. The real abuses the law was intended to curb—predatory pricing and collusion to the detriment of consumers—remain illegal. These amendments will return the law to its original mandate of promoting competition, efficiency, and consumer well-being