WASHINGTON –Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined Sen. Mike Lee
(R-Utah) in introducing the Tougher
Enforcement Against Monopolies (TEAM) Act to reform our nation’s antitrust
laws.
“America is facing a
panoply of competition concerns not just in Big Tech, but across our entire
economy. We need a holistic approach that deals with all of these concerns, and
that benefits all consumers, in every industry – without massively increasing
regulation and imposing a command-and-control grip over the economy. The TEAM
Act strikes the right balance in protecting competition and consumer welfare
while limiting government intervention in our free market economy,” Lee said.
“Anticompetitive and
monopolistic business practices hurt innovation and consumers. This bill
streamlines and strengthens antitrust enforcement and holds bad actors
accountable for their anticompetitive actions while preserving a free market,” Grassley said.
The TEAM Act, in addition to consolidating our
antitrust enforcement agencies into one, streamlined agency, strengthens our
ability to prevent and correct antitrust harm in three main ways:
The TEAM Act strengthens antitrust laws. It includes a market share-based merger
presumption, improves the HSR Act, codifies the consumer welfare standard, and
makes it harder for monopolists to justify or excuse anticompetitive conduct.
The TEAM Act strengthens antitrust enforcers. In addition to consolidating federal antitrust
enforcement at the Department of Justice, the bill also includes a version of
the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, introduced by Senators Klobuchar and
Grassley. And most significantly, the bill roughly doubles the amount of
money appropriated to federal antitrust enforcement, ensuring that our
antitrust enforcers have all of the resources they need to protect American
consumers.
The TEAM Act strengthens antitrust remedies. The bill repeals Illinois Brick and Hanover
Shoe, to ensure that consumers are able to recover damages from
anticompetitive conduct. Even more significantly, the bill allows the Justice
Department to recover trebled damages on behalf of consumers, and imposes civil
fines for knowingly violating the antitrust laws.
For more details about the bill, see the full text
here
and a one-pager
here.
An online version of this release can be found
here.
-30-