Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World

This text shows how, after World War II, the US sought to impose its antitrust policy on other nations, especially in Europe and Japan.

The author Wyatt Wells chronicles how the attack on cartels and monopoly abroad affected everything from energy policy and trade negotiations to the occupation of Germany and Japan.

He shows how a small group of zealots led by Thurman Arnold, who became the head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division in 1938, targeted cartels and large companies throughout the world: IG Farben of Germany, Mitsui and Mitsubishi of Japan, Imperial Chemical Industries of Britain, Philips of the Netherlands, and DuPont and General Electric of the US among others.