One of Biden Executive Order's Many Sprouts

President Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy never stops giving. The US Department of Agriculture has just announced that "[a]s part of its efforts to enhance fair and competitive markets, USDA is requesting comments and information from the public about the impacts of concentration and market power in fertilizer, seeds and other agricultural inputs, and retail" 

Byzantine splits

One of the strangest things about US antitrust policy to my European eyeballs has always been the byzantine split between the FTC and the DOJ on merger enforcement. Interagency collaboration as well as the very hot discussions on modernizing merger guidelines are on the agenda of an upcoming Spring Enforcers Summit (4 April). 

I need that source.

 At a panel organized during the Industrial Organization Meeting, Spring 2022, Carl Shapiro famously called himself a Modernist and others New Brandeisians (see here, fn. 7). While the recordings of the other panels are still available (one click away on the meeting's website), this is not (while it has been for a while: I caught up a few hours after the panel took place). This is a real pity for us interested in following the recent developments in antitrust policy thinking. Please NBER, put it up again. 

Stellar Wars in the Antitrust Sky?

The antitrust news of the day so far (10. 52 AM CET) is the parallel opening of investigations in the UK and the EU into the Jedi Blue allegation. Interestingly, the CMA is signalling again that the DMU politicians' time is up, this time by starting "scrutinising Google’s conduct in relation to header bidding services more widely to see if the firm abused a dominant position and gained an unfair advantage over competitors trying to provide a similar service".