Missouri Law and Monopolies America is a nation that is founded on the belief that personal freedoms are important. This notion certainly extends to the realm of business decisions as well--as such, early on in America’s history, there were not many regulations placed on businesses. However, over time, monopolies began to develop. These monopolies were considered to be bad for the market, because they discouraged competition, and as a result, led to over inflated prices on various goods and services. This was viewed as being harmful to the free market. So, in order to combat these monopolies, Congress enacted “An Act to Protect Trade and Commerce against Unlawful Restraints and Monopolies” in 1890 more commonly known as the Sherman Act. …show more content…
The first section states, essentially, that any contract that will restrict trade between states and/or foreign nations is illegal. The second section states that anyone who attempts to monopolize a market has committed a felony. While these two may sound quite similar, there is one major distinction between the two. The first section is concerned primarily with contracts that restrain trade, whereas the second section is more concerned with the structural elements of monopolies. In 1914, the Clayton Act was enacted in order to attempt to address issues that were not addressed in the Sherman Act. The notable provisions of the Clayton act are as follows: the prohibition of price discrimination, the prohibition of exclusive-dealing contracts, restrictions on tying arrangements, and regulations surrounding the process of merging businesses. Overall, the Clayton Act was put in place to rectify problems that were still being created by companies in the United States, and was more or less an addendum to the Sherman …show more content…
This provision states that “It is unlawful to monopolize, attempt to monopolize, or conspire to monopolize trade or commerce in this state.” This provision is analogous to the second provision of the Sherman Act. The differences between this statute and the Sherman Act provision are essentially the same as the differences between the first set of laws--again, to violate Missouri law, one must only interfere with commerce within the state. Additionally, this statute notably prohibits against an attempt to monopolize trade. In other words, one doesn’t need to be successful at monopolizing trade, one simply has to make a reasonable attempt to do