{"id":27551,"date":"2025-10-27T09:43:49","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=27551"},"modified":"2025-10-27T09:43:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T14:43:49","slug":"the-ftc-asserts-and-oversteps-its-antitrust-authority-against-a-key-climate-alliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/10\/27\/the-ftc-asserts-and-oversteps-its-antitrust-authority-against-a-key-climate-alliance\/","title":{"rendered":"The FTC Asserts (and Oversteps) its Antitrust Authority Against a Key Climate Alliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

\"\"<\/a>Climate alliances have become a common target of antitrust campaigns over the last several years, particularly given the complex market dynamics for these alliances to navigate<\/a>, with effective industry-wide transformation often necessitating some degree of coordination among competitors. In previous blog posts, we have addressed state legislatures\u2019 efforts<\/a> to undermine reasonable climate-mitigation investment initiatives\u2014often by claiming that such initiatives engage in unlawful boycotts<\/a> or discriminatory debanking conspiracies<\/a> against emissions-intensive enterprises. Today\u2019s post details overzealous federal enforcement against California\u2019s Clean Truck Partnership. Another blog tomorrow will discuss executive-branch attacks on corporate climate alliances at the state level.<\/p>\n

Establishment and Disavowal of the Clean Truck Partnership<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In August, the federal antitrust campaign against reasonable climate-minded cooperation achieved one of its most decisive wins to date. The Republican-dominated<\/a> Federal Trade Commission effectively dismantled the Clean Truck Partnership (CTP)\u2014one of the last readily available means<\/a> for California to promote national reductions in auto emissions, through multilateral arrangements with major truck manufacturers. Yet there is reason to avoid an overly broad reading of the FTC\u2019s regulatory mandate on these topics. Future efforts by states to secure voluntary commitments from firms on supply levels for carbon-intensive products may not be precluded\u2014and voluntary commitments on emissions levels remain even farther from the FTC\u2019s proper regulatory scope.<\/p>\n

Groundwork for the CTP was laid between 2020 and 2023, when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issued three sets of regulations<\/a> intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, imposing stringent emissions standards and requiring the eventual phase-out of new gas-powered trucks. The Biden administration\u2019s EPA waived<\/a> federal preemption of these regulations under the Clean Air Act.<\/p>\n

In furtherance of these regulations, CARB also established the CTP<\/a> with manufacturers comprising more than 90% of the U.S. market in heavy-duty trucks (including Daimler, Volvo, International Motors, Paccar, and their trade association). Under the CTP, manufacturers received additional time to comply with California\u2019s regulations, while pledging that they would meet these new clean-truck standards \u201cregardless of whether any other entity challenges California\u2019s authority\u201d to set emissions standards more stringent than the federal government\u2019s. In other words, should a new administration come to power and assert federal preemption, as President Trump\u2019s did after Congress\u2019s disapproval of the EPA waiver in June of this year (under a questionable<\/a> reading of the Congressional Review Act), CTP participants pledged to voluntarily abide by California\u2019s clean-truck measures.<\/p>\n

Spokespersons<\/a> for the truck manufacturers noted in 2023 that the extended compliance timeline, and a uniform regulatory environment less subject to political whiplash, made CTP participation a net benefit for business operations. Yet on August 12, 2025, the FTC announced<\/a> resolution of an antitrust investigation of the CTP. Truck manufacturers and their trade representatives acknowledged the partnership could not be enforced, agreed to act independently in selling trucks, and agreed \u201cnot to negotiate or enter into future agreements like the Clean Truck Partnership\u201d\u2014subject to seven years of annual compliance reports.<\/p>\n

Antitrust Concerns Raised by the Multilateral Agreement<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A statement<\/a> issued by the FTC upon closing its CTP investigation (the FTC Statement) downplays California\u2019s central role in the partnership. Instead, the FTC frames the CTP as a multilateral, quasi-contractual document \u201csigned by all the significant competitors in a market,\u201d who agreed to \u201creduce output under the guise of\u2026ESG objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, such an arrangement (if accurately described by the FTC) would raise legitimate concerns of anticompetitive collusion by market rivals. The FTC Statement asserts, for example, that the CTP \u201craises the specter\u201d of one truck manufacturer attempting to \u201cenforce the CTP\u2019s output restrictions against\u2026competitors\u201d \u2014particularly in a scenario where federal preemption deprived California of its authority to enforce the clean-truck standards. While governmental regulations restraining trade in pursuit of public-policy objectives typically receive antitrust immunity under the \u201cstate action\u201d doctrine, private regulation imposed by a politically unaccountable corporate cartel has long been subject to antitrust enforcement.<\/p>\n

Under Section 1 case law, collusive output reductions intended to raise market prices typically receive per se<\/em> legal analysis, as agreements that inherently harm competition\u2014meaning that harmful effects need not be proven in court. Along related lines, the FTC Statement argues that the mere possibility of one truck manufacturer enforcing the CTP against another constrains each participant manufacturers\u2019 \u201cincentive and ability to compete unilaterally and freely,\u201d presumably meriting per se <\/em>treatment.<\/p>\n

The FTC Statement conspicuously sets aside the factual record following real-world repeal of EPA\u2019s clean-truck waiver: instead of suing each other to reinforce the CTP\u2019s purported output reduction, the four major truck manufacturers collectively sued<\/a> California, seeking a court injunction barring CARB from pressuring them to abide by their CTP pledges (note that their joint lawsuit was not unlawful coordination, since under U.S. antitrust\u2019s Noerr-Pennington <\/em>doctrine, competing firms may jointly petition the government to address shared grievances). Nonetheless, the FTC Statement does sketch, at least in abstract terms, a potentially problematic multilateral agreement that included market competitors, that could (and did) see its state participant stripped of regulatory authority, and that could lead to anticompetitive harm.<\/p>\n

Cracks in the FTC\u2019S Antitrust Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The FTC\u2019s fair point that the \u201cantitrust concerns are obvious\u201d in this arrangement does not by itself confirm the Commission could have marshalled an effective legal case establishing that the CTP reduces competition through an unlawful output restriction.<\/p>\n

To determine whether a purported restraint has anticompetitive effects, the courts must first define the market in which any effects occur. This is a highly technical process. In the case of the CTP, the market might be comprised of gasoline-powered trucks, or trucks powered by any energy source, or broader classes of commercial-transport vehicles and platforms. The broader the definition, the more room truck manufacturers would have had to demonstrate that they were meeting consumer demand for commercial-transport capacity, while updating their fleets for today\u2019s climate-minded markets and regulatory environment. Supplying new capacity in this way would negate claims of a meaningful constraint on output.<\/p>\n

The FTC\u2019s framing of an unlawful output reduction would have faced further definitional snags. The FTC Statement brusquely notes, for example, that \u201cour antitrust laws take the dimmest possible view of agreements among competitors to restrict output or otherwise\u2026cease competing.\u201d The FTC cites for this proposition the influential Supreme Court decision Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS<\/em> (2007), which states: \u201cA horizontal cartel among competing manufacturers\u2026that decreases output or reduces competition in order to increase price is, and ought to be, per\u202fse unlawful.\u201d Yet the FTC Statement offers no plausible argument that California\u2019s recent truck regulations or the CTP agreement were designed \u201cin order to increase price\u201d for truck manufacturers\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n

Absent a per se<\/em> output reduction, the FTC would have had to contend with rule-of-reason analysis, first establishing the CTP\u2019s harm to competition, and then overcoming the pro-competitive rationales defendants could offer for the agreement. One clear weak point for the FTC\u2019s establishment of market harms stems from its speculative assertion that \u201ccollectively adopted emissions limits\u2026in practice, would similarly limit production.\u201d This formulation reflects a common but unpersuasive argument by climate-skeptic antitrust enforcers that misapplies output-reduction analysis to reductions in firms\u2019 negative externalities (here, their carbon emissions), rather than in their supply of goods and services (here, commercial-transport capacity). After all, consumers don\u2019t demand an opportunity to pollute by driving high-emitting trucks; they demand vehicles to move physical materials around.<\/p>\n

In terms of procompetitive defenses, truck manufacturers could have argued that the CTP\u2019s four-year compliance timeline (and the protracted 12-year timeline to phase out sales of new gas-powered trucks) would, on balance, stimulate competition in the relevant market. Industry-specific procompetitive rationales require a detailed analysis which we do not attempt here. But it is worth noting that start-up EV brands, freed from the need for capital-intensive investments in combustion-engine powertrains, are proliferating at a pace<\/a> the auto sector has not experienced in a century. Cost disparities between gas-powered and electric light-duty vehicles have dropped significantly<\/a> in recent years, suggesting possibilities for equivalent pricing dynamics with heavy-duty vehicles as battery technologies continue to advance<\/a> (setting aside whether sticker price provides the most useful point of pricing comparison, given EVs\u2019 substantially lower long-term operational costs). In short, market dynamics may naturally drive supply to shrink for gasoline trucks, should they become increasingly obsolete product lines with ample product substitutes.<\/p>\n

Antitrust Enforcement Overreach <\/strong><\/h3>\n

As noted above, the FTC Statement highlights distinctive features of the CTP, characterizing it as \u201cdecidedly different than a traditional regulation imposed by a politically accountable state regulator.\u201d The FTC Statement celebrates post-CTP binding commitments made by participant truck manufacturers not to \u201creplicate the CTP\u2019s most problematic provisions in the future.\u201d Taken together, these points suggest the investigation\u2019s outcome should have a narrow legal impact on states\u2019 regulatory capacities. California may face constraints in shaping national auto policy, at least during spans of federal hostility to this state\u2019s distinct status<\/a> under the Clean Air Act. But \u201ctraditional regulation\u201d should be able to continue unimpeded.<\/p>\n

However, remedies obtained by the FTC through this investigation appear to extend beyond the agency\u2019s scope of enforceable authority (mirroring, in fact, the problematic regulatory overreach that the FTC ascribes to CARB). The investigated CTP parties have pledged not only to abstain from further multilateral agreements on supply or emission levels, but also from certain bilateral agreements with states.<\/p>\n

In the FTC\u2019s summary, each targeted truck manufacturer has now pledged, as a first commitment, \u201cnot to enter an agreement with any U.S. state regulator or U.S. state government that fixes output or emissions levels and<\/em> [italics added] permits cross-enforcement by competitors.\u201d Accordingly, each of these manufacturers might still be able to enter a bilateral agreement with California or other states on related topics. In such cases, there would be much less concern about collusion between market competitors.<\/p>\n

Yet the truck manufacturers have also made other pledges. As set out in Daimler\u2019s Letter of Commitment<\/a> to the FTC, they have also pledged not to “enter or attempt to enter into any agreement with a U.S. state regulator\u2026relating to restrictions on supply or fixing emission levels, by which [Daimler] commits to being bound even if the state actor\u2026lacks authority to directly impose or enforce the applicable restrictions.”<\/p>\n

But where does the FTC derive the authority to police an agreement on emissions levels between one state and one truck manufacturer? While a limit on supply is familiar antitrust terrain, limits on \u201cemissions levels\u201d are well outside it.<\/p>\n

The FTC has suggested that, in signing onto the CTP, participating truck manufacturers had capitulated before California\u2019s bullying \u201cattempts to coopt private businesses to enforce preempted regulations in large swaths of the nation.\u201d The FTC should not now bully those same manufacturers into reinforcing its overzealous and under-scrutinized attacks on lawful state measures to reduce emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate alliances have become a common target of antitrust campaigns over the last several years, particularly given the complex market dynamics for these alliances to navigate, with effective industry-wide transformation often necessitating some degree of coordination among competitors. In previous blog posts, we have addressed state legislatures\u2019 efforts to undermine reasonable climate-mitigation investment initiatives\u2014often by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2562,"featured_media":27554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9440,69362],"tags":[69539,69448,69916,69365,69917,69918],"class_list":{"0":"post-27551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-climate-finance","8":"category-emissions","9":"tag-antitrust","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-clean-truck-partnership","12":"tag-emissions","13":"tag-ftc","14":"tag-output-reduction","15":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"\nThe FTC Asserts (and Oversteps) its Antitrust Authority Against a Key Climate Alliance - Climate Law Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2025\/10\/27\/the-ftc-asserts-and-oversteps-its-antitrust-authority-against-a-key-climate-alliance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The FTC Asserts (and Oversteps) its Antitrust Authority Against a Key Climate Alliance - Climate Law Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Climate alliances have become a common target of antitrust campaigns over the last several years, particularly given the complex market dynamics for these alliances to navigate, with effective industry-wide transformation often necessitating some degree of coordination among competitors. 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