Antitrust Brainstorming Board with John Newman

Below, we have provided the full transcript of the interview with Prof. John Newman, is a Professor of Law at University of Miami School of Law, recorded on September 10, 2021.

This interview was done as part of the Antitrust Brainstorming Board created by CPI with the support of the CCIA.

Thank you, Prof. Newman, for sharing your time for this interview with CPI.

A video of the complete interview is available HERE.

Do you think the current antitrust framework works for consumers?

Do you think the current antitrust framework works for consumers?

John NEWMAN:

I see two big problems with the current antitrust framework, loosely defined. The first is that it’s not really as intellectually cohesive as the Orthodox position suggests. And you can get at that a couple of different ways but one is to just ask whether it’s actually applied across the board in different types of cases. As an initial point on that, Hemphill, Rose, Melamed, antitrust insiders have starting to question that point and suggest that maybe we apply something more like a trading partner, welfare standard instead of a consumer welfare standard, so what we thought we were applying. The trouble with that then is that nobody’s done any, as far as I know, really rigorous theoretical work around what that trading partner welfare standard would mean in a given case. It seems like sometimes we’re applying in consumer welfare standards, sometimes we’re applying this trading partner