Justice Department to Boost Antitrust Agency : Trade: The division will add attorneys and cases. It is fighting efforts by the Commerce Department to relax joint venture laws.
The Justice Department, taking a harder line on antitrust enforcement than the Ronald Reagan Administration did, is beefing up its antitrust division for the first time in 10 years.
And the Administration’s antitrust chief indicated in an interview that the Justice Department is fighting an effort by the Commerce Department to relax antitrust laws to permit joint production ventures--a move Commerce says would help U.S. firms compete with the Japanese and other foreign producers.
“The Administration does not have a position on this issue as yet,” Assistant Atty. Gen. James F. Rill said. “The matter is under careful and active review.”
Rill underscored his own conviction that existing antitrust strictures have “not inhibited our international competitiveness. By competing at home we become more efficient and more innovative. It enhances our ability to compete abroad.”
On Wednesday, there were reports that President Bush would ask Congress--presumably in his State of the Union message that night--to relax antitrust bars to joint ventures so as to put U.S. firms in a better competitive position, an approach being pushed by Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher. But the President made no such proposal.
Signaling more active enforcement, Rill said he expects to boost by about 20% the number of attorneys in his division--from 236 to more than 280. The major part of that increase will be underwritten by pre-merger clearance fees under the Hart-Scott-Rodino law being split between the antitrust division and the Federal Trade Commission.
The pre-merger clearance, which carries a flat fee of $20,000 per transaction, will give the budgets of the antitrust division and the FTC a net enhancement each of $5 million, Rill said. In addition, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh recently signed off authority for increasing resources going to the division.
“We’re now in the market undertaking to make lateral hires for the division,” Rill said. Judging from applications, he said he expects most of the new attorneys to come from the private sector.
The additional lawyers will be used for criminal enforcement and merger activities, Rill said.
Asked about the high priority he has placed on the health care industry as a target of federal antitrust enforcement, Rill said: “I expect that there will be developments that will be noteworthy in the not-too-distant future.”
He declined to be more specific about when the developments--presumably criminal enforcement actions--would take place.
Rill said he is emphasizing health care because it is “an extraordinarily large part of the economy”--a $60-billion industry “where costs have escalated rapidly.” Bush, in his State of the Union address, drew sustained applause from Congress when he pledged new efforts to control health care costs.
In addition to health care’s being a field with “a volatile competitive situation,” Rill noted that it has become clear only in the last 10 to 15 years that antitrust laws are fully applicable to the professions, such as health care.
The number of preliminary antitrust investigations in the health care field have increased since he took over the division June 22, Rill said.
New forms of competition have emerged in the field, such as health maintenance groups and preferred provider organizations, Rill noted. He said antitrust enforcers were concerned that the reaction of some health providers to the new forms might create anti-competitive actions.
Another area of emphasis under his stewardship is the division’s participation in the Federal Communication Commission’s examination of the cable television industry.
