trust busting
Breaking corporate giants
Trust busting is government action to break up monopolies and large corporate combinations that stifle competition.
The term comes from the early 20th-century American practice of dismantling business "trusts"—legal arrangements that allowed companies to consolidate control over entire industries.
Teddy Roosevelt earned his reputation as a trust buster by taking on Standard Oil and the railroad monopolies.
- Federal Trade CommissionAgency overseeing marketplace fairness
- Teddy RooseveltTwenty-sixth American president
- Standard OilHistoric petroleum monopoly
- Clayton ActFederal antitrust statute
- consumer protectionLaws defending purchasers' interests
fair competition · level playing field · antitrust laws · market competition · breakup · Progressive Era · robber barons · Ma Bell · too big to fail · predatory pricing · monopoly · price fixing · prosecute · dominance · corporate greed · small business growth · muckraker · Rockefeller
- economic historystock market crash, Industrial Revolution, trade routes, Great Depression, gold standard
- economic policymonetary policy, tax policy, fiscal discipline, fiscal stimulus, fiscal restraint
- Gilded AgeGilded Age, robber baron, robber barons, Carnegie, Rockefeller
- monopoliesmonopoly, Standard Oil, AT&T, De Beers, Ma Bell
- Progressive EraTheodore Roosevelt, progressivism, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, muckrakers
- antitrustantitrust, price fixing, cartel, collusion, antitrust laws
trust bustinglaissez-faire
Noninterference in commerce
deregulation · corporate welfare · neoliberalism · non-intervention · crony capitalism
trust bustingmonopolization
Gaining exclusive market control
cartelization · corporate consolidation · market concentration · trust building · merger