SAN DIEGO: The US Constitution directs the federal government to perform a few crucial functions, including providing for “the common defence.” According to the Federal Trade Commission, that now includes protecting the American people from designer handbags. Under the Biden administration, the FTC has discarded decades of antitrust law and instead cooked up a stew of simmering grievances against successful companies, including luxury handbag makers.

But this aggressive approach will likely achieve little beyond stifling innovation and exalting mercurial bureaucrats. For 50 years, antitrust authorities placed consumer welfare above all else. Lower prices were deemed a good thing, and a big company was not a bad company unless it hiked prices for consumers who had no choice but to pay them.

Today’s FTC would do well to remember that being big does not preclude a company from being outflanked by new competitors. There is a long history of upstarts dethroning giants: Barnes & Noble was America’s biggest bookseller before Jeff Bezos launched Amazon from his Seattle garage, warning early investors that there was a 70% chance he’d go bankrupt. Walmart was a minnow compared with powerful Sears – “where America shops,” boasted its famous slogan – when Sam Walton, a thrifty man from Arkansas, opened the first branch in 1962 (he allegedly chose the one-word name because it saved on storefront lettering costs).

More recently, Proctor & Gamble’s Gillette brand control.