Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Delivers Keynote Address at American Bar Association's Antitrust Fall Forum

How does antitrust fare in the required reduction in federal regulations? First, antitrust is law enforcement, it’s not regulation.  At its best, it supports reducing regulation, by encouraging competitive markets that, as a result, require less government intervention.  That is to say, proper and timely antitrust enforcement helps competition police markets instead of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. doing it.  Vigorous antitrust enforcement plays an important role in building a less regulated economy in which innovation and business can thrive, and ultimately the American consumer can benefit. The second answer relates to remedies—at times antitrust enforcers have experimented with allowing illegal mergers to proceed subject to certain behavioral commitments.  That approach is fundamentally regulatory, imposing ongoing government oversight on what should preferably be a free market.  And, as 11 Senators wrote to the Attorney General earlier this year, the “lack of enforceability and reliability of such conditions [can] render them insufficient” to protect consumers.  As we reduce regulation across the government, I expect to cut back on the number of long-term consent decrees we have in place and to return to the preferred focus on structural relief to remedy mergers that violate the law and harm the American consumer.