Question

How aggressively should the U.S. government enforce antitrust laws? Is tough enforcement necessary to prevent the kind of anti-competitive practices that harm the economy and hurt consumers? Also, discuss a recent antitrust case in the United States.

Answer 1

Commonly referred to as competition laws, antitrust laws are designed to protect the interests of the customer and ensure fair competition in an open market economy.

U.S. government should aggressively enforce antitrust laws so that the citizens interested are protected. Governments across the globe have enforced antitrust laws strictly to ensure that the market is not governed by a single player and their is a fair play in the market. It has been noticed that players resorted to price manipulations, monopoly, bid rejigging and various other unfair business practices due to which the governments had to come back strongly against these players and form stricter laws that deter private players from these unfair business practices and give priority to customers in a free market economy.

It is believe that free market economy should be governed by the laws of demand and supply rather than a controlled environment due to unfair practices by select business owners. Though the laws have been constituted, stricter enforcement of these competition laws is the key. US government should strictly enforce antitrust laws and set an example for other nations across the globe.

Anti-competitive practices like creating a monopoly, bid rejigging, unfair trade practices etc. hurt the customers and economy overall. Tough enforcement is the key and is quintessential to promote fair business practices. Tough enforcement will set an example for players promoting unfair and unethical business practices.

The recent antitrust case is regarding the Big Bad Tech companies under which the Justice department is investigating the US largest tech firms for alleged monopolistic behavior. This case is against Facebook, Google etc. and is assumed to be one of the largest case post 1990's against Microsoft. The lawmakers announced that they would be investigating the abuse by these giant tech companies over the digital economy.