What do antitrust laws do?

Yet for over 100 years, the antitrust laws have had the same basic objective: to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up.

Why is it called antitrust law?

Antitrust law is the law of competition. Why then is it called “antitrust”? The answer is that these laws were originally established to check the abuses threatened or imposed by the immense “trusts” that emerged in the late 19th Century.

What are the four major antitrust laws?

The main statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914 and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914.

What is illegal in antitrust laws?

The Sherman Antitrust Act This Act outlaws all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate and foreign trade. This includes agreements among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate customers, which are punishable as criminal felonies.

Who do antitrust laws protect?

consumers
Antitrust laws also referred to as competition laws, are statutes developed by the U.S. government to protect consumers from predatory business practices. They ensure that fair competition exists in an open-market economy.

Why are antitrust laws bad?

The problem with antitrust laws is that it prevents the company from growing beyond a certain point. Hence, the company with the maximum resources, which can invest the maximum amount, is prohibited from growing. As a result, technological development stagnates.

What is another word for antitrust?

antimonopoly
In this page you can discover 4 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for antitrust, like: antimonopoly, , anti-competition and doj.

Why is antitrust important?

Antitrust laws protect competition. Free and open competition benefits consumers by ensuring lower prices and new and better products. In a freely competitive market, each competing business generally will try to attract consumers by cutting its prices and increasing the quality of its products or services.