Antitrust AAG Jonathan Kanter of @JusticeATR on his approach: “Our job is to ensure a fair game not to choose who wins.” #StiglerAntitrust22
“Law enforcers and courts must respect Congress's core command that the antitrust laws should be applied to protect competition. How we do that must evolve as competitive realities themselves evolve.”
“we need to focus on markets as they exist today. If conduct harms competition, the models and tools, must adapt, not the other way around.”
“We are law enforcers,” Kanter says, explaining why the agency will push to litigate rather than settle. “Over reliance on settlements leaves us relying on yesterday’s law.”
In response to a question about DOJ’s two recent court losses, Kanter says they aren’t viewing them as a loss because the courts accepted that cases focused on labor market harms are a legitimate focus of antitrust.
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Hello from the courtroom* of Judge Amit Mehta where a hearing is about to get underway on @JusticeATR request for sanctions against Google. (I am listening to the conference line so I can live-tweet without violating the DC court's rules against electronics)
DOJ says Google improperly taught its employees to mark internal many discussions as attorney-client privileged to shield documents from discovery. Google says that isn't an accurate representation of its policies and the docs that needed to be turned over largely have.
Judge is running a little late so we won't be getting underway till 1:15.
Assistant AG for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter of @JusticeATR says making sure the public is involved in discussions about antitrust is a priority. "We are not being faithful to the goals of the antitrust laws… unless we are reaching out and seeking input"
Highlights the FTC/DOJ listening sessions ahead of the guidelines update as part of the agency's efforts to expand access to justice.
FTC Chair Lina Khan says the agency is taking a "close look at the entire investigation process" of mergers. One thing that's troubling for enforcers, she says, is how “proposing facially unlawful deals has become normalized”
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says he plans to move forward with "unused rulemaking" authority related to open banking and consumer control of data. "That's something I'm going to be looking to implement," Chopra says.
CFPB will also be working with the Justice Department on its review of banking merger guidelines, he says.
The FDIC has also opened a public consultation on bank mergers and are looking for comments on how bigger mergers, particularly ones involving more than $100B in assets, and how those impact broader financial stability issues.
AAG for Antitrust Jonathan Kanter says @JusticeATR is "more than ever" committed to litigate cases. "The public cannot bear the risk of a divestiture that flops," he says.
The agency will be prioritizing Clayton Act Section 8 cases to challenge "interlocking directorates" -- when a member of a company's board of directors also serves on another company's board or within the company's management.
He also announces a slight change to the DOJ's Leniency Program to emphasize that a company must notify the DOJ "promptly" if it finds a violation.
In her keynote, @FTC chair Lina Khan discusses several ways that today's tech giants are different from monopolists of the past. 1) Their economic reach. While they are dominant in one (or sometimes more) areas they are expanding into other sectors: Rx, payment systems, Hollywood
The abundant cash flow of the tech giants lets them finance entry into nascent and emergent markets, where they can monetize operations in a way that is not available to anyone else, Khan says.
2) Business strategy. The companies aren't necessarily using the playbook where they buy up a startup to foreclose it, or cut off access to keep it from taking over their monopoly.
The @JusticeATR has asked Judge Amit Mehta to sanction Google for training its employees to "camouflage" business documents from discovery in legal disputes, according to a brief filed today
"Google teaches its employees to add an attorney, a privilege label, and a generic 'request' for counsel’s advice to any sensitive business communications the
employees or Google might wish to shield from discovery"
The program, internally called "Communicate with Care," has been used by Google to withhold thousands of documents where the attorneys never even responded with legal advice, DOJ says in its brief.