79-02-A3

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Federal Trade Commission

Transcript Yale Brozen, professor of business economics at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, has called attention in National Review magazine to a "strange notion brewing in the Anti-Trust Division of the Federal Trade Commission." It is a notion that, Professor Brazen says, would be suicidal for our nation to adopt. In simple language, the Trade Commission and the Justice Department, are going to attack as monopolists firms that, by operating efficiently and making consumer goods available at a fair price, have won a large share of the market. Now we all understand the purpose of the Anti-Trust laws. They are to prevent a single firm or a group of firms from getting together, holding back on production so as to create a shortage and then jacking up the price to the consumer. But now the F.T.C. is apparently going to punish a firm or firms who increase production, lower prices and, as a result, win a large share of customers. As Brozen says, Henry Ford, who captured about 60 percent of the automobile market (because he made a car the average man could afford when up till then they had been affordable only by the rich) today would have the F.T.C. assailing him as a monopolistic fiend. A present day perversion of the anti-trust laws is being carried out against DuPont. That company developed a low cost method for producing titanium dioxide pigments. They passed these savings through to the customer in a lowered price, thereby capturing about 40 percent of the market. Business is so good they are building a new plant to make more available to the consumers. Now the anti-trust laws are supposed to prevent "restraint of trade", the fixing and raising of prices, not the increase in production to make more products available for purchase. But an anti-trust complaint has been filed against DuPont. The F.T.C. is prosecuting Kellogg, General Foods, and General Mills. They are charged with "brand proliferation". In other words, because these companies offer us a variety of breakfast cereals they are guilty of "a shared monopoly". Apparently they are guilty of trying to give us what we want, bran cereals, vitamin-enriched cereals, grape nuts, and so forth. They'd be alright in the eyes of the government had they just stuck to corn flakes. When the Sherman anti-trust bill was passed in 1890, Senator Sherman said it was intended to outlaw arrangements which tended to raise the cost to the consumer. Indeed, when the Senate Judiciary Committee explained the bill to the Senator, they declared that a man who "got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could" would not be in violation of the Sherman act. From 1921 to 1925 Ford supplied more automobiles than all the other companies combined. Then in 1927 Ford shut down for a year to retool for production of the Model A. The price of cars didn't go up because of the shortage - they went down. The Federal Trade Commission is embarked on a witchhunt which could very conceivably result in increased prices for all of us. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 79-02-A3 Production Date 01/19/1979 Book/Page RPtV-408 Audio Youtube? No
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