How China Accidentally Made Consumer Welfare Cool Again
The consumer welfare standard was supposed to be on the defensive. After nearly a decade of attacks from the neo-Brandeisian movement, critics had cast it as too narrow, too technocratic, and too forgiving of “Big Tech.” Yet the standard’s most important new ally may turn out to be an unexpected one: geopolitics.
The consumer welfare standard asks whether business conduct harms the competitive process, typically by raising prices, reducing output, degrading quality, or slowing innovation. Neo-Brandeisianism, by contrast, is more skeptical of concentrated economic power as such. It worries not only about prices and output, but also about whether large firms wield too much political, social, or economic influence.
For all its political momentum, neo-Brandeisianism has had a much harder time reshaping antitrust law than reshaping antitrust rhetoric. Courts have largely continued to apply economically grounded standards focused on competitive effects, efficiency, innovation, and consumer welfare. As Lazar Radic and Nicolas Petit recently observed, neo-Brandeisianism has had far greater influence on the political conversation surrounding antitrust than on antitrust doctrine itself.
Strategic rivalry between the United States and China has now added a new dimension to that debate. Innovation, technological leadership, and economic performance have become matters of national strategy, particularly in industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing. Ironically, that shift has strengthened the case for an antitrust framework centered on efficiency, innovation, and dynamic competition—the very considerations at the heart of the consumer welfare standard.