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New DOJ Antitrust Chief Withdraws Bush Report On Monopoly Law

By Brent Kendall, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Signaling a renewed commitment to antitrust enforcement, President Barack Obama's chief antitrust enforcer at the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday withdrew a controversial Bush administration report that sought to clarify antitrust guidelines on illegal monopoly conduct.

The Bush report, released last September, was regarded as friendly to business and a weakening of federal antitrust laws.

Christine A. Varney, the new head the Justice Department's antitrust division, said Monday that the report is no longer department policy. Businesses, courts and lawyers should no longer rely on it, she said.

Varney, delivering a speech at the Center for American Progress, criticized the Bush administration's antitrust enforcement and said: "As antitrust enforcers, we can no longer sit on the sidelines."

Varney said repealing the report "is a shift in philosophy and the clearest way to let everyone know that the antitrust division will be aggressively pursuing cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers."

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust regulatory authority with the Justice Department's antitrust division, refused to join the Bush report last fall, and three of the FTC commissioners blasted it as "a blueprint for radically weakened enforcement of Section 2 of the Sherman Act," the law that bars a company from illegally acquiring or maintaining a monopoly.

The Bush administration report sought to clarify antitrust guidelines on everything from corporate discounting and rebate practices to a company's refusal to deal with rivals.

Explaining the need for the report, President Bush's antitrust chief, Thomas O. Barnett, said in September that regulators needed "to avoid interfering in the rough and tumble of beneficial competition that drives innovation and economic growth."

-By Brent Kendall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9222; brent.kendall@ dowjones.com

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  05-11-091014ET
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