Please stop saying “antitrust protects competition, not competitors.” (Letter to the editor)

Regarding John W. Mayo and Mark Whitener’s March 22 Outlook essay, “Five Myths: Antitrust law”:

The authors concluded by noting that “enforcers and courts tend to take competitors’ complaints about their rivals’ behavior with a grain of salt.” That is true, and, in my view, more unfortunate the more true it is. 

Competitors are the first ones to notice that other, usually bigger companies are abusing their market power, and they often notice that by observing that they are being hurt by the anticompetitive conduct of those companies. So while some competitors’ complaints may not be true, one would hope that enforcers and courts have become sophisticated enough to look carefully and not just take all competitors’ complaints with a grain of salt.