News just broke that House Republican Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who has always disliked antitrust law, is proposing to use the budget process to roll back a key law in this area. The specific provision at issue is Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits “unfair methods of competition.”
I believe this change could be significant. Recently, Section 5 was used to litigate against pharmacy benefit managers. It’s in the antitrust case against Amazon, another case against Corteva/Syngenta over exclusive dealing in seeds and chemicals, and it was the authority used to ban non-compete agreements. These cases, as well as every consent decree ever reached under Section 5, are now at risk