Tim Wu, a White House Special Assistant for Technology and Competition Policy, has been traveling the country lately extolling the virtues of craft beer. Nothing wrong with that, per se, except that Wu says small breweries represent a “return to American tradition prior to mass production” and “those are the things we want the entire rest of the economy to look like.”
That attracted the attention of Sean Heather, senior vp-international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Does Wu “propose handcrafted cars and tailor-made airplanes?” Heather writes in a blog post, adding: “There is no doubt that consumers benefit from a variety of choices and price points, but consumers also benefit from the types of low prices and national consistency that comes from scaled production.
“‘We don’t want our federal enforcers” to go after “small technical violations,’ he said. ‘We want them to take on the big cases against the entities that have market power’ and the ability ‘to make big arrangements that have large anti-competitive effects.’ Stadium deals of particular interest, he suggested…But in process, he suggested that small-scale pay-to-play — like a craft brewer buying a tap handle at the local bar — would not trigger enforcement,” Heather said.
“Viewed most charitably, one might agree that regulators should use their limited resources to tackle the most serious violations of law, but it is truly bizarre for a senior White House official to suggest that certain violations of the law should not be enforced. The law should apply across the board to players of any size,” U.S. Chamb er’s Heather noted.