Liberal Media Coverage Is Boosting Conservative Nationalists
“The group aims “to align conservatives on the narrow and limited view of antitrust that Robert Bork popularized in the 1970s, called the ‘consumer welfare standard,'” notes Washington Monthly. This standard says consumer interests—not breaking up companies just for being big or inducing artificial competition just for the sake of competition—should be the primary concern of antitrust law enforcement. It is not a “pro-monopoly” argument but an argument against excessive government intervention in private industry and for a conception of antitrust enforcement that puts protecting consumers—not any particular economic ideology—first.
“Under the consumer welfare standard, which has anchored U.S. antitrust law for over four decades, consumer harm is measured through tangible economic effects and empirical evidence,” notes Tom Herbert, federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform, in a recent opinion piece in The Hill. “Antitrust law under the consumer welfare standard allows business conduct that benefits Americans through lower prices, better quality products and greater access to goods and services.”
Just a few years ago, the fact that Republicans would turn against such a standard in favor of a leftist vision of antitrust enforcement would be weird, to put it mildly. But antitrust law is now seen as another tool in fighting the culture war. “Large businesses [are] increasingly viewed as the enforcement arm of the cultural Left,” notes Klein, and “the cancel culture and anti-PC debates have become more animating for a lot of conservatives than traditional social issues.””