Sen. Mike Lee giving the keynote at @FedSoc event on Bork’s Antitrust Paradox 
The House antitrust package “are not antitrust laws at all but thinly veiled attempts to regulate vast swaths of the economy.”
The Biden FTC is “inexperienced and ideological,” he says and “lacking in understanding of the businesses they seek to control.”
Lee: “the law deals with conduct not status. We punish people for what they do, not who they are. ‘Big is bad’ abandons that fundamental principle” in American law
Lee maintains that the consumer welfare standard can deal with non-price effects. Anti-monopolists move to abandon the consumer welfare standard is a “Trojan horse for woke social policy.” They want to get rid of antitrust and move to regulation, he says
Bork warned about relying too much on economics in antitrust. But Lee notes that modern antitrust enforcement has become “obsessed” with this overemphasis on economics. “They allow theory to Trump facts”
This “fetishization of economics” has led to a dilution of antitrust enforcement, Lee says. He says he agrees with those on the left that “the status quo is no longer tenable” in antitrust and we’ve had an over correction since Bork
Lee says the left doesn’t want to to break up Big Tech to protect people but control Big Tech. They want to transfer control from the companies to government bureaucrats
But conservatives can’t just do nothing, Lee says. Plugs his TEAM Act to combat monopolies. It would eliminate the FTC role in antitrust. Lee says the Catholic Church can’t have two popes and the US can’t have two agencies
It would codify the consumer welfare standard. Increase DOJ antitrust funding. Tighten the standards for merger review, Lee says
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
