All too often, unscrupulous businesses weaponize the United States’ antitrust laws — which are only supposed to be utilized to protect consumers against higher prices and other consequences of monopoly power — for their own self-serving purposes. Professor Thomas DiLorenzo noted this problem more than a third of a century ago in a piece titled The Rhetoric of Antitrust. He wrote that, “In theory antitrust regulation promotes competition in the marketplace but in reality its results are often anticompetitive. It is routinely used by businesses having problems competing.” A key to understanding the difference between competition as a process benefiting consumers and competition as a misnomer for protecting those who are (or are afraid of) being outcompeted for consumer favor was revealed in an Open Letter on antitrust protectionism during the Clinton Administration. The letter, signed by 240 professors across the country, made it clear that “consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions– rival business firms did.”
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