The Second Statement

It is sometimes said of these combination the monopolistic trusts that they reduce prices to the consumer by better methods of production, but all experience shows that this saving of cost goes to the pockets of the producer. The price to the consumer depends upon the supply, which can be reduced at pleasure by the combination.

These are clear expressions of concern for the distributional effects of market power. The second statement, in fact, suggests approval of efficiency only insofar as its benefits are passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.

It is unlikely that income distribution was the sole concern of congress when it passed the Sherman act. But it seems clear that the redistribution of income from consumers to producers was an effect of market power that congress hoped to prevent by passing the act. A modern economist would describe consumer welfare – the maximization of consumer’s surplus or, equivalently, the minimization of monopoly profits plus dead weight welfare loss – as a likely goal of congress in pissing the Sherman act.

Debates over the intentions of the congress that passed the Sherman act will not doubt continue. The mainstream view is that the Sherman act had multiple goals, both economic and no economic. Even scholars who defend efficiency as the preferred goal of the antitrust laws concede that efficiency was not the only thing congress had in mind when it passed the Sherman act.