Brief · economy and tax fairness
Why antitrust is back — and what it actually does
After four decades of consumer-welfare orthodoxy, antitrust enforcement is rebuilding. A short tour of what changed, what didn't, and what to watch for.
The narrowing and the return
For roughly forty years, federal antitrust enforcement operated under a doctrine sometimes called the consumer-welfare standard — the idea that a merger or business practice should be challenged only if it could be shown, with quantitative precision, to raise prices for consumers in the short run. This was not the original purpose of US antitrust law. It was a doctrine constructed largely in the 1970s and 1980s, and it shrank the field of cases enforcers were willing to bring.
What it ignored is now visible at scale: concentration in labor markets that suppresses wages, concentration in supply chains that hollows out resilience, and concentration in information markets that warps the conditions of public deliberation.
What’s changed
Three things, roughly in order of impact:
- Merger guidelines have been rewritten. The 2023 federal merger guidelines explicitly reintroduced concerns about labor monopsony, vertical foreclosure, and serial acquisitions — categories the old guidelines had effectively retired.
- Cases have been brought. Including against incumbents long thought untouchable, in tech, agriculture, and live-event ticketing.
- States are acting. State attorneys general now bring antitrust cases that materially shape outcomes, often in concert with federal enforcers.
What hasn’t
The fundamental statutory text — Sherman Act §§1 and 2, Clayton Act §7 — has not changed. Many courts remain skeptical of theories that depart from the consumer-welfare frame. Outcomes will be uneven for years.
What to watch for
- Labor-side cases. Cases challenging non-compete clauses, no-poach agreements, and effective monopsony in healthcare, fast food, and tech.
- Vertical mergers. Watch acquisitions where a dominant platform absorbs a complementary input or distribution channel.
- State capacity. The states that staff their AG offices well are the ones doing meaningful work. The federal lift is real but not unlimited.
What this is not
Antitrust is a structural tool. It does not, by itself, redistribute. It does not, by itself, raise wages. What it does is keep the field open enough that other tools — labor law, tax policy, sectoral regulation — can work. That is its job. It is doing more of it than it has in a generation.