FTC EXPERT AVAILABLE: Robert H. Bork Jr. is the President of the Antitrust Education Project, and recently reissued his father's book, The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself.
Tim Wu, who worked from the White House to coordinate the antitrust agenda of the early Biden Administration, explains the role of the government regulator as the necessary “policeman at the elbow” to restrain corporations from unfairly squeezing out competition. President Biden’s enforcers, Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Jonathan Kanter, head of the Department of Justice antitrust division, push progressive policing of the economy with enthusiasm.
They are always at capitalism’s elbow, reflexively opposing almost any proposed merger or acquisition as a danger to the future health and well-being of the nation.
To be effective in this mission, progressives must believe they are effective prognosticators. They must be able to peer into the future — like the milk-bath clairvoyants in “Minority Report” — to see the precrime atrocities that future mergers will wreak on the market, consumers, and the various “stakeholders” that progressives have added to the antitrust equation.
The validity of their prognostication ability can decide truly vital issues. For example this administration attempted to join with European regulators to prevent Illumina, a life sciences firm, from reacquiring biotech specialist firm Grail, to create a blood test that could screen for 50 types of cancer. Such a multi-cancer early detection test does not exist. Yet the FTC opposed the merger — until slapped down by their own administrative law judge — on the grounds that it would likely lead to a lack of competition in these life-saving tests, which, again, don’t yet exist.
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PLUG BOOK: The Antitrust Paradox By Judge Robert H. Bork
BIO: Robert H. Bork, Jr., heads the Bork Group, a 18-year-old virtual crisis, litigation, and public affairs agency, which draws from the best, most-experienced, independent communications talent. Mr. Bork has designed strategies for clients in many high-profile cases and policy battles. His experience includes directing the public affairs strategy in critical issues for Eli Lilly, Google, AT&T, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, to name just a few. He began his career as a journalist as a police reporter before moving to business and economics. As a journalist, he covered international economics at U.S. News and World Report, was managing editor of the quarterly journal Regulation, and worked as a reporter at Forbes, The Detroit Free Press, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Miami Herald. Mr. Bork made the switch to advocacy in 1987 working at the Heritage Foundation, on Capitol Hill as an aide to U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-NH), and as special assistant for U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills. Throughout his career, Mr. Bork has specialized in the development and implementation of communication strategies in crises, litigation, and legal policy. In his many years of experience managing the public environment surrounding high-profile matters, he has worked directly with CEOs, general counsel, and communications executives of major U.S. and international corporations. Mr. Bork's range of experience includes antitrust, product liability, intellectual property, securities fraud, economic espionage, white-collar crime, mergers and acquisitions, First Amendment and employment discrimination. His work has been on behalf of clients ranging from the automobile industry to pharmaceuticals, computers, software, chemicals, railroads, franchising, telecommunications, insurance, health-care, and former manufacturers of lead pigment. In every matter he has worked directly with the client's legal counsel. Mr. Bork graduated from Carleton College with a degree in American history. He was a Herbert J. Davenport Fellow in Business and Economic Journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He lives in McLean, VA, with his wife (and general counsel) Diana. They have two children.
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Robert H. Bork Jr. is the President of the Antitrust Education Project, and recently reissued his father's book, The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself.