Sec. 2. Findings and purposes
311 words·~1 min read·
/bill/116/s/3426/is/section-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress finds that— competitive markets, in which multiple firms compete to buy and sell products and services, are critical to ensuring economic opportunity for all people in the United States; when companies compete, businesses offer the highest quality and choice of goods and services for the lowest possible prices to consumers and other businesses; competition fosters small business growth, reduces economic inequality, and spurs innovation and job creation; in the United States economy today, the exercise of market power is substantial and growing; anticompetitive exclusionary conduct is an important source of market power and a substantial threat to the United States economy; when dominant sellers exercise market power, they harm buyers by overcharging them, reducing product or service quality, limiting their choices, and impairing innovation; when dominant buyers exercise market power, they harm suppliers by underpaying them, limiting their business opportunities, and impairing innovation; when dominant employers exercise market power, they harm workers by paying them low wages, reducing their benefits, and limiting their future employment opportunities; nascent or potential rivals can be an important source of competitive discipline for dominant firms; antitrust enforcement against anticompetitive exclusionary conduct has been impeded when courts have declined to rigorously examine the facts in favor of inaccurate economic assumptions that are inconsistent with contemporary economic learning, such as presuming that market power is not durable and can be expected to self-correct, that monopolies drive innovation, that above-cost pricing cannot harm competition, and other flawed assumptions; and the courts of the United States have improperly implied immunity from the antitrust laws based on Federal regulatory statutes, even limiting the application of statutory antitrust savings clauses passed by Congress.
The purposes of this Act are to— deter exclusionary conduct that harms competition, particularly by dominant firms; and enhance antitrust enforcement by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the State enforcement agencies, and private parties.