Source: Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, Department of Justice
To read his entire remarks click here.
DOJ and Agriculture
This brings me finally to agriculture and the Great State of Iowa. As Midwesterners, the last thing you need is a lecture on agriculture from someone who lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. In Iowa, the free market hinges on your agriculture industry, from soy to corn, from beef to pork. Where I can perhaps shed light is to talk about the ways in which antitrust enforcement intersects with agriculture. After all, farmers were there at the dawn of the antitrust movement in the Gilded Age and were a key force behind the antitrust movement.
Few professions better exemplify the American Dream than farming and agriculture. The dream of a farmer to work the land, grow a crop, build a life, and contribute to their community, is very close to our founding essence.
But agriculture also exemplifies the threats Tyranny.gov and Tyranny.com pose to the American Dream. I for one do not believe the government should be telling farmers what to plant and when, how and where to harvest and sell their crops, and when they’re allowed to upgrade their tractors. Socialist experiments in agricultural control have been amongst the most devastating historical examples of the perils of central planning. We do not want to model our economy after Stalin’s, after all.
At the same time, we must stand guard against Tyranny.com when it comes to our farmers and their ability to navigate the free market. This applies to their dealings as buyers of key inputs as well as their ability as sellers in the agriculture marketplaces.
That’s why this DOJ believes that antitrust enforcement in agriculture must be a top priority. Under the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, the DOJ Antitrust Division is tasked with enforcing the antitrust laws in three core areas: collusion, monopolization, and mergers. These laws cut across sectors, meaning they apply across our economy, including to agriculture. We also have a role to play in enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA). This legislation, enacted in 1921, has provisions that are similar to the antitrust laws, but it also has provisions that prohibit meat packer conduct that is deceptive, unfair, or unjustly discriminatory. We share enforcement authority of the PSA with the USDA. USDA has the investigatory powers. For most violations involving poultry, USDA must refer the matter to DOJ if legal action is necessary. Otherwise, for other livestock, the USDA can investigate the matter or refer to DOJ at its discretion.
In the past decade, these antitrust laws have interacted with agriculture in differing ways with differing results. The first Trump Administration investigated merger and acquisitions activity in the seed sector. In 2017, the Dow-DuPont merger combining the companies’ crop protection and seed businesses was approved with divestitures. Similarly, in 2018, the Bayer-Monsanto merger, which was the biggest agriculture merger ever, was approved with significant divestitures involving seeds and herbicides. The 2017 global merger of ChemChina and Syngenta was also cleared by the FTC despite some concerns regarding ChemChina’s foreign ownership.
In contrast to Trump 45, the Biden Administration did not see much merger activity in the agriculture sector. Instead, the DOJ Antitrust Division brought some of the first PSA cases in recent decades and enforced antitrust laws in agriculture labor markets. That Administration also challenged information sharing among processors when it alleged increased prices for turkey, poultry, and pork products in the Agri Stats case, which is pending in the District of Minnesota.
The Path Forward
The second Trump USDA and DOJ committed in September this year to formalize a partnership under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to protect competition in key agricultural markets such as feed, fertilizer, fuel, seed, equipment, and other essential goods. According to USDA’s data, since 2020, seed expenses have risen 18 percent, fuel and oil costs increased 32 percent, fertilizer expenses increased 37 percent, and interest expenditures spiked 73 percent. The reasons underpinning these numbers vary and need to be investigated and analyzed, but the numbers themselves should give everyone pause. At the time of the MOU, I noted that “Antitrust enforcement ensures free market competition for agricultural inputs, lowering costs for farmers and prices for consumers. America’s farmers deserve nothing less than the best the Antitrust Division and USDA can do to promote competitive markets that free them to feed America.” This MOU is a positive start, but more is required to operationalize it, which brings me to today.
As I noted earlier, personnel is policy, and antitrust enforcement is no exception to this general rule. For agriculture cases, it is particularly important where our personnel are physically located. We plan to focus much of our enforcement work out of our Chicago field office and have already opened several investigations in that office since the start of the Administration.
To that end, I am pleased to announce Zachary Trotter as the new career head of the Chicago office. Zachary is a seasoned litigator, and we are excited to see the energy and determination he brings to his new role. He is joined by Ben Christenson, who will be serving as an Assistant Chief for criminal enforcement and John Thornburg who will continue serving as Assistant Chief for civil enforcement in the Chicago office. Together, they will have the full support of our Front Office at the Antitrust Division in bringing important cases consistent with overall Administration policy.
What might these cases look like? Well, it is no secret that President Trump loves our farmers, and he is a man of decisive action. This is why he recently issued an executive order via Truth Social directing the DOJ to investigate the beef packing industry. Additionally, the MOU between the USDA and DOJ gives us some direction because it directs us to focus on lowering costs of key inputs like feed, fertilizer, fuel, seed, equipment, and other essential goods. We have also met with many agricultural industry participants since starting into our time in office.
My grandmother used to tell me, “God gives us two ears and one mouth for a reason,” and I try to honor her memory by being a good listener. One meeting in particular is etched in my memory. It took place in the DOJ’s Great Hall, which is our biggest meeting space. At the meeting, we gave farmers an open mic and heard them out. And, boy, did they make their feelings known! One common theme emerged from our meetings: now is the time for action in Trump time.
Our agriculture cases will be informed by the President’s order regarding beef, our MOU with the USDA as well as our industry meetings. But they will of course turn on the facts and evidence and be grounded in existing law and precedent. And we will as always work with our economists in our investigations. We will be well-served with our whistleblower rewards program with the U.S. Postal Service, in which whistleblowers will now be compensated for reporting criminal conduct to the Antitrust Division. Together with new personnel and creative MOUs with partner agencies, now is the time to seize to our mission and deliver for the heartland American workers and consumers.
We will not, however, continue to take certain assumptions too much for granted. If our Big Tech cases against Google have taught us anything, it is that even relatively fast-moving Internet markets can remain monopolized for decades. Our litigation experience suggests that we cannot assume that markets will always self-correct, that market concentration is never a problem, that entry is always easy, that exclusionary conduct usually fails, and that buyer power is never an issue worth investigating.
Similarly, we will exercise our criminal antitrust jurisdiction over bid rigging, price fixing, and other per se conduct as appropriate when well supported by facts and evidence.
Let me conclude by telling you why I’m so hopeful that we can succeed here. As I mentioned at the outset, there is significant bipartisan support for strong antitrust enforcement in the electorate and politically. I attended a Judiciary Committee hearing on antitrust and agriculture just a few weeks ago, and you would be shocked to see the bipartisanship and agreement in the room. As farmers testified about the competitive challenges they face, Republican and Democratic Senators alike cheered them and urged strong antitrust action to help America’s farmers.
My father-in-law Dale is a rancher in Oregon, and I know from personal experience how much it means to ranchers and farmers to keep the family business going from generation to generation. This is the rancher’s American Dream. But this can only happen if the current generation can keep their ranch operating in free, fair, and competitive markets. For this to become reality, our great farmers, ranchers, and small businesses like independent seed dealers need an antitrust cop on the beat. We at the DOJ Antitrust Division stand ready to serve them with open hearts and, importantly, open minds.
