FMC COMMISSIONER STRESSES GLOBAL REVIEW OF ANTITRUST REGIMES
Current reviews of ocean common carriers’ antitrust regimes by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Japan will have an impact on potential antitrust changes under U.S. law, a commissioner of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission said.
FMC commissioner John A. Moran told an industry conference in Washington on Wednesday that deliberations by trading partners of the U.S. and international organizations “will certainly influence discussion about the future of carrier antitrust immunity” in the U.S.
Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, has scheduled a hearing on March 22 on ocean shipping regulation and the potential removal of carriers’ antitrust immunity to have conferences and discussion agreements.
“The antitrust immunity provided for collective carrier activities under U.S. shipping law is in part premised on the fact that antitrust immunity is provided for carriers by our trading partners,” Moran said.
Moran added that the recent sale of Sea-Land, the last major U.S. owned global liner carrier, to Denmark’s A.P. Moller group “raises the question in some circles of why the U.S. should preserve antitrust immunity that, on one level, may benefit only foreign-owned companies.”
International perspectives on competition policy “have been evolving in recent years,” he said. “The continuation of antitrust immunity in the long-term may well depend on whether policy makers in the U.S. and abroad continue to believe that the conditions and economics of international ocean liner shipping dictate some degree of antitrust immunity… and that government oversight is effective in preventing abuse by the carriers of the antitrust immunity.”
Moran added that the antitrust immunity is based on the view that the disadvantages of carrier antitrust immunity are outweighed by broader public benefits to international trade.