The International Brotherhood of Teamsters sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to pause its review of Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s (MPC) sale of the convenience store chain to Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven’s parent company, Seven & i Holdings.
In the request made on behalf of the organization’s 1.4 million members, President James Hoffa asked the FTC to put the review on hold until either “legislation introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chairwoman on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, has been enacted; or the FTC is able to ensure that the legal and economic staffs have meaningfully taken into account the lack of efficiencies and the full range of competitive harms that the transaction may cause.”
Klobuchar proposed the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act on February 4. The legislation would give federal enforcers the resources they need to do their jobs, strengthen prohibitions on anticompetitive conduct and mergers, and make additional reforms to improve enforcement.
“The bill returns coordinated effects to the center of merger analysis; does away with unrealistic requirements that the agencies prove competitive effects to a near certainty; and, emphasizes the importance of examining and preventing exclusionary conduct,” Hoffa wrote. “In this case, it is our belief that the anticompetitive effects of the proposed transaction would not be remedied by selected divestitures of stores in local markets.”
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