Anti-Trust Laws Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Anti-Trust Laws - Essay Example The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), created in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law, is a US government agency tasked with protecting consumers by preventing anti-competitive business practices.In terms of public policy, the FTC has a broad regulatory mandate to reign in organizations judged to have engaged in activities that stifle industry competition, thus eliminating products or services from reaching the marketplace that are overpriced, substandard or lacking in the innovation that true competition would engender.FTC chairpersons have wide discretion regarding the cases pursued by the agency. For example, despite a global antitrust campaign mounted by computer chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices against rival Intel, which is supported by at least two FTC commissioners as well as by trade regulators in Korea and the European Commission, current agency head Deborah P. Majoras recently declined to open a formal investigation into the matt er (Labaton 1).In the FTC case against the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association (WCA), it was alleged that the organization and its executive director Russell A. Leonard violated Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C.  § 45 by conspiring to advise members of the more than 900-member association on how to increase prices for chiropractic services based on new billing codes and to boycott managed care plans in order to receive higher reimbursement rates (â€Å"Complaint†).