CHINA: The Global Monopolist
Antitrust laws exist to deter unfair competition in economic markets. Usually, legal cases involve a state actor taking a huge corporation to court to break up a consumer-threatening monopoly.
A Global Antitrust fight.
While Antitrust Laws exist to deter unfair corporate competition, what recourse does America have when the monopolist is a an entire country the size of China?
The same question can be asked by the Chinese about the United States of America and the monopolies controlled by the Americans, but this could be an essay for another time.
Lily Zhou, journalist for The Epoch Times
Mrs, Zhou wrote this yesterday in her essay: ‘US Launches New Trade Probe Into Chinese Legacy Chips’:
According to USTR, China is projected to reach around half of the world’s capacity to build foundational logic chips by 2029, and to lead in production capacity for other types of legacy chips. Evidence indicates Beijing has been using unfair trade practices to achieve the goals, such as subsidies, state-backed hacking, forced technology transfer, wage suppression, market gate-keeping, and opaque regulatory preferences and discrimination.
“This is enabling its companies to rapidly expand capacity and to offer artificially lower priced chips that threaten to significantly harm and potentially eliminate their market-oriented competition,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told reporters on a conference call.
I asked Claude.ai
“What are some of the most notable antitrust cases in the USA and Canada since 1900?”
Notable U.S. antitrust cases:
1902: Northern Securities - First major application of Sherman Act, broke up railroad monopoly
1911: Standard Oil Co. v. United States - Resulted in breakup of Rockefeller's oil empire into 34 companies
1969: United States v. IBM - 13-year case over computer market monopolization; eventually dropped in 1982
1974: United States v. AT&T - Led to 1984 breakup of Bell System telecommunications monopoly
1998: United States v. Microsoft - Challenged bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows; settled in 2001
Notable Canadian cases:
1976: R. v. K.C. Irving Ltd. - Major media monopoly case in New Brunswick
2012: Commissioner of Competition v. Visa/MasterCard - Challenged credit card merchant fees
2017: The Beer Store case - Investigated beer retail monopoly in Ontario
Key difference: U.S. cases typically resulted in structural remedies (company breakups), while Canadian enforcement has focused more on behavioral remedies and fines.
2025?
The USA is upping its fight against it biggest MONOPOLY competitor: CHINA.
Traditional remedies won’t work.
China is not a single corporation or one that is accountable to American law.
Tariffs Bring manufacturing back to the US and Canada. Conflict is not a solution.