This article is a part of the The 2020 Draft Joint Vertical Merger Guidelines: What’s in, what’s out — and do we need them anyway? symposium.
[TOTM: The following is part of a symposium by TOTM guests and authors on the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The entire series of posts is available here.
This post is authored by Steven J. Cernak (Partner, Bona Law; Adjunct Professor, University of Michigan Law School and Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School; former antitrust counsel, GM).]
[Cernak: This paper represents the current views of the author alone and not necessarily the views of any past, present, or future employer or client.]
What should we make of Cmr. Chopra’s and Cmr. Slaughter’s dissents?
When I first heard that the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division issued the draft Vertical Merger Guidelines late on Friday January 10, I did not rush out and review them to form an opinion, antitrust geek though I am. The issuance was not a surprise, given that the 1984 Guidelines were more than 35 years old and described as outdated by all observers, including those at an FTC hearing more than a year earlier. So I was surprised when I saw some pundits, especially on Twitter, immediately found the new draft controversial and I learned that two of the FTC Commissioners had not supported the release. Surely nobody was a big 1984 supporter other than fans of Orwell, Bowie, and Morris, right?
Some of my confusion dissipated as I had a chance to read and analyze the draft guidelines and the accompanying statements of Commissioners Wilson, Slaughter, and Chopra. First, Commissioners Slaughter and Chopra only abstained from the decision to release the draft for public comment. In their statements, they explained their actions as necessary to register their disagreement with the terms of this particular draft but that they too joined the chorus calling for repudiation of the 1984 Guidelines.
But some of my confusion remained as I went over Commissioner Chopra’s statement again. Instead of objections to particular provisions of the draft guidelines, the statement is more of a litany of complaints on all that is wrong with today’s economy and antitrust policy’s role in it. Those complaints are ones we have heard from Commissioner Chopra before. They certainly should be part of the general policy debate; however, they seem to go well beyond competitive issues that might be raised by vertical mergers and that should be part of a set of guidelines.
As the first sentence and footnote of the draft guidelines make clear, the draft guidelines are meant to “outline the principal analytical techniques, practices and enforcement policy of … the Agencies” and “reflect the ongoing accumulation of experience at the Agencies.” They are written to provide some guidance to potential merging parties and their advisers as to how the Agencies are likely to analyze a merger and, so, provide some greater level of certainty. That does not mean that the guidelines are meant to capture the techniques of the Agencies in amber forever – or even 35 years. As that same first footnote makes clear, the guidelines may be revised to “reflect significant changes in enforcement policy…or to reflect new learning.” But guidelines designed to provide some clarity on how vertical mergers have been and will be reviewed are not the forum for a broad exchange of views on antitrust policy. Those comments are more helpful in FTC hearings, speeches, or enforcement actions that the Commissioners might participate in, not guidelines for practitioners.
Commissioner Slaughter’s statement, on the other hand, stays focused on vertical mergers and the issues that she has with these draft guidelines. She and other early commentators raise at least some questions about the current draft that I hope will be addressed in the final version. For instance, the 1984 version of the guidelines included as potential anticompetitive effects from vertical mergers 1) regulatory evasion and 2) the creation of the need for potential entrants to enter at multiple stages of the market. As Commissioner Slaughter points out, the current draft guidelines drop those two and instead focus on 1) foreclosure; 2) raising rivals’ costs; and 3) the exchange of competitively sensitive information.
Should we take the absence of the two 1984 harms as an indication that those types of harms are no longer important to the Agencies? Or that they have not been important in recent Agency action, and so did not make this draft, but would still be considered if the correct facts were found? Some other option? While the new guidelines would become too long and unwieldy if they recited and rejected all potential theories of harm, I join Commissioner Slaughter in thinking it would be helpful to include an explanation regarding these particular changes from the prior guidance.
Who bears the burden on elimination of double marginalization?
Finally, both Commissioner Wilson’s and Commissioner Slaughter’s statements specifically request public comments regarding certain features of the draft guidelines’ handling of the elimination of double marginalization (“EDM”). While they raise good questions, I want to focus on a more fundamental question raised by the draft guidelines and a recent speech by Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim.
The draft guidelines provide a concise, cogent description of EDM, the usual analysis of it during vertical mergers, and some special factors that might make it less likely to occur. Some commentators have pointed out that EDM gets its own section of the draft guidelines, signaling its importance. I think it even more significant, perhaps, that that separate section is placed in between the sections on unilateral and coordinated competitive effects. Does that placement signal that the analysis of EDM is part of the Agencies’ analysis of the overall predicted competitive effects of the merger? That hypothesis also is supported by this statement at the end of the EDM section: “The Agencies will not challenge a merger if the net effect of elimination of double marginalization means that the merger is unlikely to be anticompetitive in any relevant market.”
Because the Agencies would have the ultimate burden of showing in court that the effect of the proposed merger “may be substantially to lessen competition, or tend to create a monopoly,” it seems to follow that the Agencies would have the burden to factor EDM into the rest of their competitive analysis to show what the potential overall net effect of the merger would be.
Unfortunately, earlier in the EDM section of the draft guidelines, the Agencies state that they “generally rely on the parties to identify and demonstrate whether and how the merger eliminates double marginalization.” (emphasis added) Does that statement merely mean that the parties must cooperate with the Agencies and provide relevant information, as required on all points under Hart-Scott-Rodino? Or is it an attempt to shift to the parties the ultimate burden of proving this part of the competitive analysis? That is, is it a signal that, despite the separate section placed in the middle of the discussion of competitive effects analysis, the Agencies are skeptical of EDM and plan to treat it more like a defense as they treat certain cognizable efficiencies?
That latter position is supported by comments by AAG Delrahim in a recent speech: “as the law requires for the advancement of any affirmative defense, the burden is on the parties in a vertical merger to put forward evidence to support and quantify EDM as a defense.” So is EDM a defense to an otherwise anticompetitive vertical merger or just part of the overall analysis of competitive effects? Before getting to the pertinent but more detailed questions posed by Commissioners Wilson and Slaughter, these draft guidelines would further their goal of providing clarity by answering that more basic EDM question.
Despite those concerns, the draft guidelines seem consistent with the antitrust community’s consensus today on the proper analysis of vertical mergers. As such, they would seem to be consistent with how the Agencies evaluate such mergers today and so provide helpful guidance to parties considering such a merger. I hope the final version considers all the comments and remains helpful – and is released on a Monday so we can all more easily and intelligently start commenting.
