BOB BARR: In Another Win For Consumers, Trump Ending Biden’s War On Bulk Pricing

(Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool via Getty Images)

The one remarkably consistent concern on the minds of American consumers can be summed up in one word: prices. It is even driving congressional debates this year, as lawmakers face mounting pressure to show that they understand what constituents’ families face every time they swipe a card at the checkout counter.

One of the least discussed aspects of this multi-faceted, supply-and-demand problem — more than charges of “corporate greed” — is regulation. Most specifically, anger at the Biden administration’s policies that targeted the very market efficiencies that tend to keep prices down.

Perhaps nowhere was this phenomenon more evident than in former President Joe Biden’s antitrust policy.

Under the previous administration, federal regulators increasingly treated scale and efficiency not as consumer benefits (which they are), but as suspect behavior requiring government intervention. Thus, discounts realized from buying in bulk were reframed as “unfair.” The result of this mindset was an antitrust agenda that, if fully realized, would have pushed everyday costs even higher.

For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations shared a basic antitrust principle: enforcement should protect competition, not individual competitors. The metric was simple —  do consumers benefit through lower prices, greater choice, and innovation? This consumer-focused barometer helped keep........

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