Should American Antitrust Laws Protect Only American Consumers?

Thanh Phan
Additional contact information
Thanh Phan: Ph.D. Candidate, Law Faculty, University of Victoria, USA

American Journal of Trade and Policy, 2017, vol. 4, issue 3, 103-108

Abstract: The United States adopted its first antitrust statute in 1890. Despite their long development history, American antitrust laws do not specify any objectives. The primary aim of the American antitrust laws centers on a long-standing debate among many scholars. This paper firstly argues that the American antitrust laws were designed to promote consumer welfare. However, exemptions for export cartels confine the concept of “consumers” protected by the Sherman Act to those in the U.S territory. This paper proposes that exemptions for export cartels should be abolished for two reasons. First, the exemptions make American antitrust policy inconsistent because they do not reflect the objective that promotes consumer welfare. Second, from an international perspective, exemptions for export cartels are inconsistent with the efforts of the American Government to apply the Sherman Act extraterritorially—a measure that aims to protect consumers from international cartels.

Keywords: Competition law; export cartel; consumer welfare; economic efficiency; unfettered competition; Sherman Act; Webb-Pomerene Act (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://abc.us.org/ojs/index.php/ajtp/article/view/424/833 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:ajotap:0071

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Trade and Policy is currently edited by Charles A. Rarick

More articles in American Journal of Trade and Policy from Asian Business Consortium Asian Business Consortium, 10-B-6, Darussalam Tower, Mirpur Road, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alim Al Ayub Ahmed ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).