Incidentally, European corporate leaders, who sometimes urge the Commission to be less rigorous in its enforcement of competition rules, should also keep these past cases in mind — especially if they want a more innovative and competitive European economy, as we all do. Perhaps they should put the issue into a broader perspective and think twice.
With its Microsoft decision, the Commission — followed by several other competition authorities across the world — allowed for the emergence of Google and other start-ups to become hugely successful. In fact, it put pressure on Microsoft to change its behavior and embrace a corporate culture building on collaboration rather than monopolization, supporting open-source projects and fostering partnerships with other companies.
And many analysts believe it is these changes, stimulated by the past determination of competition authorities, that help explain Microsoft’s success over the last decade, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella.
Against this backdrop, Trump’s view that EU competition policy is driven by discriminatory motivations against U.S. companies is simply unfounded. What’s true is that in any national or supranational context like the EU, institutions such as competition authorities and central banks have been set up in the eminent American tradition — dating back to the late 19th century (with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890) and the early 20th century (with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) — precisely with the goal preventing these abuses, whether by companies in the marketplace or by governments abusing future generations via high inflation.
Of course, it’s no surprise that leaders with an autocratic vision wouldn’t feel at ease with institutions entrusted by governments and parliaments of the past with preventing power from becoming absolute. But it was the U.S. that set postwar Germany, and later the EU, on this track.
When occupying the country after World War II, America imposed the creation of two institutions on the newly born Federal Republic of Germany: First, the Deutsche Bundesbank — an independent central bank modeled on the Federal Reserve System, meant to avoid a repetition of the hyperinflation that contributed to the advent of Nazism. Second, the Bundeskartellamt competition authority, modeled on the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, with the power to prevent the reemergence of cartels and trusts in heavy industry — another factor that had contributed to Hitler’s aggression and World War II.
