We expect that this year's antitrust outlook will continue
to carry a degree of uncertainty, whether in the United States, the
European Union, or elsewhere. Our next two posts will cover some of
the causes of present uncertainty, a few questions as well as some
predictions.
Going back at least 50 or more years, U.S. antitrust enforcement
has been marked more by continuity than abrupt radical change.
During this period, there was a gradual evolution in enforcement
trends in the United States. This evolution is best characterized
at the federal level by a movement away from blanket rules of per
se legality or illegality (e.g., resale price maintenance and
inflexible merger standards), greater emphasis on economic analysis
of likely competitive effects, and an attempt to strike a rough
balance between too-aggressive enforcement (which inhibits
potentially procompetitive conduct benefiting consumer welfare) and
too-lenient enforcement (which risks
