US antitrust action will advance as markets evolve

Significance

This is the latest example of the Biden administration using antitrust enforcement to tackle inflation by lowering prices where it considers anticompetitive practices, especially by market intermediaries such as PBMs, keep them artificially high.

Impacts

• The Biden administration's Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing coordinates its 'whole of government' crackdown on price gouging.
• Antitrust officials will increasingly scrutinise the risks of market concentration to resiliency in critical sectors.
• State attorneys-general are becoming more active in antitrust but have diverse views, creating a patchwork of localised enforcement.