The 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines: Some Suggestions for Revision

In 2020, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published their Vertical Merger Guidelines (VM Guidelines). The Guidelines were intended to reveal the principal analytical techniques, practices, and enforcement policies employed by the two Agencies, but they were short-lived at the FTC. In 2021, the VM Guidelines were rescinded by the FTC. Even before they were rescinded, their general language and some of the illustrative examples were not fully specified, which made them misleading. As work begins on reconstructing the VM Guidelines, we illustrate some of the weaknesses of the 2020 version and offer some suggestions for their revision. In this article, we will demonstrate why the incomplete specification can lead to some analytical difficulties. In addition, we will offer some clarifications and corrections. Our goal is to suggest refinements to the 2020 VM Guidelines so that they will be more useful in developing future guidelines for antitrust enforcement policy.