Europe promotes competition more than America

Posted by The Washington Post

Europe promotes competition more than America

By Mario Monti

MILAN — President Trump’s “America First” motto may seem straightforward, but in reality, it’s full of contradictions. America is a nation of competing interests. So which part of it — industry, consumer or worker — does Trump aim to put first?

In the short and medium term, certain policies to put American industry first may clash with policies to put American consumers or workers first. For example, Trump’s “America First” policy does not have a clear answer when it comes to antitrust, an area where consumers’ interests are usually pursued more directly than producers’ interests, whether they are businesses or workers. Trump has not articulated how he will resolve this contradiction. In contrast, Europe has mostly found the right balance between these diverging interests.

When it comes to antitrust legislation, America once set the standard. Competition policy was first introduced in the United States in the late 19th century, while in Europe, it was only developed in the context of European integration starting in the 1950s. But today, the European system is stronger in many ways than the American scheme, which has been somewhat slower to adapt to new challenges. In competition policy, for example, the E.U. embraces not just antitrust but also controls how much aid a state can provide a business and provides other forms of oversight for how national governments