DOJ Antitrust Division Prevents Shipping Container Merger That Spelled Supply Chain Disaster
Washington, D.C. – The American Economic Liberties Project today released the following statement in response to Cargotec and Konecranes abandoning their merger plans one day after the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division threatened a lawsuit.
“American businesses and families will directly benefit from the DOJ Antitrust Division’s actions this week to prevent a merger between two shipping industry giants that would have spelled disaster for the global supply chain,” said Matt Stoller, Research Director at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This merger would have been the latest in a decades-long, uninterrupted march towards complete market consolidation in the shipping industry. We’ve already seen the pain inflicted by monopolization in the global supply chain. At long last, we have antitrust enforcers who are not afraid to enforce the Clayton Act to prevent illegal mergers that create or entrench market power, and it’s the American people who will benefit.”
To learn more about consolidation in shipping, see Matt Stoller’s “Too Big to Sail: How a Legal Revolution Clogged Our Ports” here.
Learn more about Economic Liberties here.
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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.