The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law kicks off a series of hearings this week that should focus first and foremost on ensuring that antitrust fosters consumer welfare. They should evaluate large technology platforms on a single question: Is what they are doing good for average Americans, while not engaging in clearly anticompetitive conduct?
Publications: Aurelien Portuese
February 24, 2021
Two Pitfalls Lawmakers Must Avoid in House Antitrust Subcommittee Hearings on “Reviving Competition”
February 19, 2021
It may pave the way for other states follow, but Maryland’s digital tax will not prove to be a way out of the crisis. It will only make the crisis linger.
February 11, 2021
ITIF filed comments advising the Commission not to introduce such a tax. ITIF explained the many reasons why the planned digital levy is a misguided recommendation, and urged the Commission pursue a more reasonable path:
February 9, 2021
The DMA may prove to be most effective in building walls where consumer prices may increase, consumer quality decrease, and entrenched market positions’ overall contestability diminish rather than increase. The DMA may potentially harm gatekeepers, something EU policymakers indeed have in mind, since virtually all the gatekeepers as defined by the DMA are American. But it will certainly replace them with walls for consumers and innovation.
January 29, 2021
Organizational efficiencies should not be an opportunity to enforce precautionary measures in innovation markets.
January 29, 2021
The Facebook lawsuit aimed at breaking up an innovative leader of social media arbitrarily favors internal growth over external growth, discretionarily disavows previous regulatory decrees with retroactive effects, and discards consumer preferences in order to impose the regulator’s preferences of a myriad of platforms forced to renege on the sought-after scalability of the platforms.
January 27, 2021
Is this really a privacy or an antitrust problem, or yet another example of a conflated, little understood issue?
January 25, 2021
The Commission’s inception impact assessment envisages the possibility of no longer enforcing competition laws with respect to independent platform workers in order to improve their working conditions. The four options identified by the European Commission are misguided and detrimental to consumers, platform workers, and innovation. ITIF articulates 10 better ways to improve the working conditions of economically vulnerable platform workers while preserving the proper enforcement of EU competition laws in a fast-changing and highly innovative digital platform economy.
December 17, 2020
The DOJ’s attempt to instill corporate selflessness by prohibiting favoritism is at odds with competition on the merits and the spirit of fundamental economic freedoms.
December 2, 2020
In a political weaponization of antitrust laws, the administration and its state AG allies decided to go to battle against Google over an issue the president thought was an obstacle to his re-election: the alleged collusion between big tech companies and the Democrats against himself.