Frequent antitrust interventions into the economy have thankfully been out of fashion in recent years. However, about once a decade Washington uses government’s biggest hammer against industry, antitrust law, in an effort to smash a disfavored company. This is one of those years.
Antitrust law in the United States is not one law but rather several federal and state laws. One of those is the Sherman Act of 1890, which was designed to prohibit the abuse of monopoly power. Other notable parts are the Clayton Act of 1914 and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914.
Successful innovation brings market success, and so the unfortunate pattern of antitrust is to punish successful innovators. In the 1970s government went after AT&T, in the ‘80s IBM, in the ‘90s Microsoft. Today some are threatening to break apart Google. This disturbing attack, which uses the Sherman Act as its excuse, has little but populist resentment going for it.
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