Main Street Alliance Executive Director Chanda Causer recently released a statement regarding the draft of new merger guidelines published on July 19 by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission.
These guidelines apply a new principle of potential or presumptive harm, or “structural presumption,” and one provision says that transactions will now be considered presumptively unlawful if the merged parties have a combined market share of more than 30%.
In the statement, Causer says, “Today is a victory for Main Street businesses. For far too long, leaders in both parties have ceded too much power to big business and large corporations. Allowing huge concentrations of power to form has badly hurt the competitiveness of Main Street businesses like our 30,000 plus members nationwide.
“Due to this lack of strong oversight and enforcement of our antitrust laws, we have entered a second gilded age where big businesses are hurting our democracy by accumulating too much power in the marketplace. The result has been a displacing of the democratic process and the inability of the state to properly prioritize the needs of the people vs. the needs of the powerful.
“Lina Khan’s leadership at the FTC has been exemplary, as she supports kind capitalism and creates an equal playing field for true small business. The proposed merger guidelines released today are a strong step in the right direction, and we look forward to seeing them implemented in the weeks and months to come.”
