I continue to hear reports from NVOs, freight forwarders, small and medium-sized shippers, and shippers' associations that the discussion agreements target them for discriminatory treatment. In fact, no shipper regardless of size is immune from the inherently anticompetitive effects of discussion agreements. And, it is an interesting situation - in some respects, NVOs, for example, are competitors of the carriers and in other respects, they are customers. To the extent that they are competitors, I have no problem with carriers competing - if there were a free market. Again, there is not.
Carriers have regulatory obligations as a tradeoff for their antitrust immunity.
They cannot knock off their competitors under the cloak of antitrust immunity and ignore those obligations. If they want to engage in free market competition, then there must be a free market. Finally, one argument that has always been made in favor of antitrust immunity is that all of our trading partners have antitrust immunity for their carriers, so we must have it also. On its face, that is unpersuasive. Their having a bad policy does not justify our having one.