Competition Policy in Global Trading System

While the global trade regime has made significant strides in eliminating tariffs and other barriers to free trade, it has yet to develop a consistent and enforceable antitrust and competition policy that combats monopolies, cartels, and other private arrangements that continue to hamper equitable access to the world's goods and services. This book takes a giant step toward achieving this goal. Based on a conference of national authorities and leading scholars in antitrust and competition law and policy, Competition Policy in the Global Trading System: Perspectives from the EU, Japan and the USA presents twenty insightful essays which together provide an in-depth assessment of current achievements and impasses, as well as a variety of possible ways forward. Among the relevant factors in this progression, the authors discuss such approaches as bilateral and regional international cooperation agreements; WTO competition rules, enforceable through the dispute resolution procedure; and international development of US, EU, and Japanese antitrust laws. Each of these approaches is examined through the all-important lens of enforcement - a spectrum that extends from deterrence to private actions imposing such penalties as prejudgment interest or treble damages. The crucial issue of how international antitrust rules should be incorporated into the global trading system is explored from many angles. Significantly, the book comes at a time when the report of the U.S. International Competition Policy Advisory Committee (ICPAC) is under close scrutiny in all major trading countries. The conference on which this book is based was in fact the first occasion at which top-level antitrust enforcers discussed this report. Including as it does the opinions of several former and present government and WTO leaders in antitrust and competition policy, Competition Policy in the Global Trading System: Perspectives from the EU, Japan and the USA sets the stage for the integration of trade and competition rules that is now gathering momentum. It is a book no official or academic in the field can do without.