For Immediate Release
(202) 224-5653
KOHL TESTIFIES ABOUT NEED FOR RAILROAD ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT AT SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE HEARING
Consumers Pay Higher Prices for Food, Energy Because of Anticompetitive Rate Hikes in the Railroad Shipping Industry
“On the Antitrust Subcommittee, we have seen that in industry after industry, vigorous application of our nation’s antitrust laws is the best way to eliminate barriers to competition, to end monopolistic behavior, to keep prices low and quality of service high,” Kohl told the Committee.
Kohl’s Railroad Antitrust Enforcement Act was passed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 5, 2009, and Kohl reached an agreement with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) last June to include the provision in Rockefeller’s rail regulatory reform bill.
Many industries – known as “captive shippers” -- are served by only one railroad. These captive shippers have faced constantly rising rail rates. In many cases the ordinary protections of antitrust law are unavailable to these captive shippers – instead, the railroads are protected by a series of exemptions from the normal rules of antitrust law to which all other industries must abide.
As an example, Dairyland Power in
Current antitrust law protects a wide range of railroad industry conduct from scrutiny by antitrust enforcers. Railroad mergers and acquisitions are exempt from antitrust law and are reviewed solely by the Surface Transportation Board. Railroads that engage in collective ratemaking are also exempt from antitrust law. Private parties have no right to obtain injunctions to halt anti-competitive practices. Kohl’s bill will eliminate these and other antitrust exemptions by allowing the federal government, state attorneys general and private parties to file suit to enjoin anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions. It will restore the review of these mergers to the agency where they belong, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. And it will eliminate the antitrust exemption for railroad collective rate making.