Excessive Pricing: The Flaws of ‘Tea Party Competition’ Policy

Since the adoption of the Guidance Communication in 2009, the Commission has kept exploitative abuses—
and in particular excessive pricing cases—in a state of artificial hibernation, and focused on exclusionary
cases as a matter of enforcement priority. The Commission’s small antitrust policy against exploitative abuses
is predicated on ‘Tea Party’ competition economics: in the long term, high prices are presumed to deliver efficient
outcomes, and competition enforcers risk doing more harm than good in trying to improve market outcomes