US President Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, said on Tuesday, January 15, he favors strong enforcement of US antitrust laws and would examine statistics showing that scrutiny of mergers is at historic lows.
“I am for vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws to preserve competition,” Barr told a US Senate panel during his confirmation hearing. “As I said, this is going to be an area I want to get into.”
Barr was responding to questions from Republican US Senator Josh Hawley about what Hawley called all-time low levels of scrutiny of mergers.
“I am interested in exploring those statistics,” said Barr. “At the end of the day, it’s competition we’re worried about in different markets.”
Hawley asked if Barr believed that high levels of concentration in many parts of the economy, particularly the technology sector, could hamper competition and deserve scrutiny.
Barr said he was concerned about network effects that occur when a product’s value to one consumer increases as other consumers use it.
“The thing I’m concerned about are the network effects that are now at work where they’re so powerful that particular sectors could essentially be subsumed into these networks,” Barr replied. “They’re just very powerful network effects because of the size.”
In addition, Barr told US senators that regulators need to take a deeper look at the “huge b
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