FTC’s Bedoya Presses for Return to Fairness Over Efficiency

The Federal Trade Commission’s newest member said the agency should focus on fairness in its antitrust enforcement, eschewing recent efforts by courts to focus the law on efficiency.

Democrat Alvaro Bedoya urged the FTC in his first speech on antitrust enforcement to “return to fairness,” citing the Robinson-Patman Act, a 1936 price-discrimination law, as evidence that Congress intended the agency to focus on the issue.

“We need to step back and question the role of efficiency in antitrust enforcement,” Bedoya said in an advance copy of a speech prepared for delivery Thursday in Minneapolis. “We cannot let a principle ...