International Competitive Harm and Domestic Antitrust Laws: Forms of Analysis

Professor Rahl has focused this Symposium on the potential harms to states and to the international economic and political systems caused by export exemptions to antitrust laws. The problem is that states generally apply their antitrust laws only to conduct that affects their own territory. Assuming that anticompetitive conduct produces harmful effects somewhere, a state's decision not to apply its antitrust principles to ex- port conduct encourages competitive harm at the international level ("international competitive harm") by increasing incentives for businesses to engage in such conduct. The question Professor Rahl poses, therefore, is: How can we explain this problem, and how, if at all, should states respond to it?