Antitrust,Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Small Business

The purpose of this article is to discuss a few aspects of antitrust enforcement that are directly related to small businesses. The first point concerns how the antitrust laws work as an economic "charter of freedom" by protecting our economy from the misuse of market power by dominant firms, or from anticompetitive collusion by groups of firms, or from anticompetitive mergers, all of which can blunt the mainspring of our economic success – competitive markets. Second is an expansion on the first theme which focuses on how antitrust enforcement helps preserve two freedoms that I think small businesses care about very much: the freedom to engage in entrepreneurship, and the freedom to innovate. A final discussion involves a few recent cases recently seen at the Antitrust Division that illustrate the many ways in which antitrust enforcement has helped the small business marketplace.