Editing 79-02-A3 (section)

= Federal Trade Commission =

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=== Transcript ===
Yale Brozen, professor of business economics at the Graduate School
of Business, University of Chicago, has called attention in National
Review magazine to a "strange notion brewing in the Anti-Trust Division
of the Federal Trade Commission." It is a notion that, Professor Brazen
says, would be suicidal for our nation to adopt.

In simple language, the Trade Commission and the Justice Department,
are going to attack as monopolists firms that, by operating efficiently
and making consumer goods available at a fair price, have won a large
share of the market.

Now we all understand the purpose of the Anti-Trust laws. They
are to prevent a single firm or a group of firms from getting together,
holding back on production so as to create a shortage and then jacking
up the price to the consumer. But now the F.T.C. is apparently going
to punish a firm or firms who increase production, lower prices and, as
a result, win a large share of customers. As Brozen says, Henry Ford,
who captured about 60 percent of the automobile market (because he made
a car the average man could afford when up till then they had been
affordable only by the rich) today would have the F.T.C. assailing him
as a monopolistic fiend.

A present day perversion of the anti-trust laws is being carried
out against DuPont. That company developed a low cost method for
producing titanium dioxide pigments. They passed these savings through
to the customer in a lowered price, thereby capturing about 40 percent
of the market. Business is so good they are building a new plant to
make more available to the consumers. Now the anti-trust laws are
supposed to prevent "restraint of trade", the fixing and raising of
prices, not the increase in production to make more products available
for purchase. But an anti-trust complaint has been filed against DuPont.

The F.T.C. is prosecuting Kellogg, General Foods, and General Mills.
They are charged with "brand proliferation". In other words, because
these companies offer us a variety of breakfast cereals they are guilty
of "a shared monopoly". Apparently they are guilty of trying to give us
what we want, bran cereals, vitamin-enriched cereals, grape nuts, and so
forth. They'd be alright in the eyes of the government had they just
stuck to corn flakes.

When the Sherman anti-trust bill was passed in 1890, Senator Sherman
said it was intended to outlaw arrangements which tended to raise the
cost to the consumer. Indeed, when the Senate Judiciary Committee
explained the bill to the Senator, they declared that a man who "got
the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could"
would not be in violation of the Sherman act. From 1921 to 1925 Ford
supplied more automobiles than all the other companies combined. Then
in 1927 Ford shut down for a year to retool for production of the Model A.
The price of cars didn't go up because of the shortage - they went down.
The Federal Trade Commission is embarked on a witchhunt which could very
conceivably result in increased prices for all of us.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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<TR><TD WIDTH="150">Batch Number</TD><TD WIDTH="150">{{PAGENAME}}</TD></TR>
<TD>Production Date</TD><TD>01/19/[[Radio1979|1979]]</TD></TR>
<TD>Book/Page</TD><TD>[[Radio_Commentary_Books#Reagan.27s_Path_to_Victory|RPtV-408]]</TD></TR>
<TD>Audio</TD><TD></TD></TR>
<TD>Youtube?</TD><TD>No</TD></TR>
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