Insights

Washington – August 15, 2024: The 2025 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 42 Crowell & Moring lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 29 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – August 17, 2023: The 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 47 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 41 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – August 18, 2022: The 2023 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 54 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 32 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

In a hotly contested 3-to-2 vote, the Federal Trade Commission in December 2020 issued a 43-page Commentary on Vertical Merger Enforcement (“Commentary”) that examines the agency’s prior vertical merger enforcement actions. While the Commentary does not break new ground, it helpfully compiles the FTC’s vertical enforcement record from the past quarter century and summarizes the Commission’s theories of harm and analysis of both anticompetitive effects (e.g., foreclosure and raising rivals’ costs) and pro-competitive benefits (e.g., elimination of double marginalization and efficiencies) in vertical merger reviews. Most notably, the Commissioners’ statements on the Commentary once again reveal a deep split—along party lines—about the agency’s approach to vertical merger enforcement and remedies, and portend potentially substantial enforcement changes under the Biden administration.

On October 6, 2020, the majority staff of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law released a long-awaited report on the state of competition in digital markets titled Investigation of Competition in Digital Markets, Majority Staff Report and Recommendations (“Staff Report”). The 450-page Staff Report is the capstone of a year-plus investigation of digital markets, the conduct of the largest online companies, and the effectiveness of current antitrust laws and enforcement. The Staff Report lodges heavy criticism of the state of competition in the digital economy and antitrust enforcement, and recommends an array of legislative proposals—including specific reforms to address anticompetitive conduct in digital markets, as well as strengthening merger and monopolization enforcement and significant revisions to the antitrust laws generally—that would arguably represent the largest overhaul of antitrust law and enforcement in history, not just in digital markets but across all industries. A group of Republican Subcommittee members issued a separate report, The Third Way: Antitrust Enforcement in Big Tech, which supports bipartisan efforts to reform antitrust enforcement to address competitive harm in digital markets, but disagrees with some of the majority staff's recommended proposals.  

For the first time since President Woodrow Wilson appointed the first Federal Trade Commission over a century ago, one president has secured the nominations of five new Commissioners, who will soon replenish a Commission that has served for more than a year with just two. This complete overhaul of the FTC’s composition injects added uncertainty about the direction of U.S. antitrust and consumer protection policies, but also presents opportunities as the five Commissioners establish their priorities and shape their views of the many pressing issues now facing the agency. In this Client Alert, we consider the issues likely to be at the forefront of the FTC’s enforcement agenda.