Experts Tell Senate Panel Zero‑Price Markets, Vertical Mergers and Agriculture Need New Tools
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Summary
Three expert witnesses told the Subcommittee that antitrust enforcers must adapt to harms in zero‑price markets, take a harder look at vertical mergers and continue attention to agricultural consolidation, recommending a mix of litigation and targeted legislation.
Three witnesses — law professors Roger Alford and John Newman and former state enforcer Gwendolyn Cooley — gave testimony emphasizing distinct but related enforcement priorities.
John Newman described "four areas of new antitrust consensus," starting with harms in zero‑price markets: "Markets without prices didn't seem to be markets at all and were therefore unworthy of our protection," he said, arguing those harms (attention extraction, privacy costs and concentrated marketplaces of ideas) can be translated into consumer‑welfare terms. He and other witnesses urged courts and lawmakers to recognize how data, attention and algorithmic design impose real costs.
Newman and Alford also highlighted an expanded willingness by agencies to litigate against vertical mergers, citing the FTC's successful challenge to Illumina's proposed acquisition of GRAIL as a recent example. Newman said blocking that deal left downstream competitors with incentives to invest and "racing to develop" multi‑cancer early detection tests.
Gwendolyn Cooley detailed how state attorneys general coordinate multistate litigation and defended the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act as a tool that preserves states' litigation choices. She said multistate coalitions often produce stronger, more provable cases and cited the $102,500,000 settlement in the multistate Suboxone litigation as an example of that work.
Roger Alford framed the political backdrop as a form of "economic populism" that could sustain vigorous antitrust enforcement across administrations while balancing skepticism of both corporate power and unnecessary government intervention. All three witnesses recommended adequate funding for antitrust staffs and, where appropriate, structural remedies rather than behaviorally focused settlements.
The witnesses' testimony combined doctrinal points with sectoral examples — platform self‑preferencing, algorithmic coordination and agricultural supply chains — and consistently signaled that both litigation and legislation will be needed to address systemic market power.