The hearings are structured to bring together experienced individuals from U.S. businesses, consumer organizations, the legal and economics communities and other law enforcement agencies to share personal insights regarding the effectiveness of antitrust and consumer protection laws in the current global marketplace. If there are adjustments that need to be made to better protect consumers or to better ensure that antitrust does not unnecessarily impede the ability of U.S. businesses to compete globally, an important source of that information will be those individuals who confront competition questions every day. The hearings will be held several days a week for the next ten weeks. Topics related to auto, textile, steel, pharmaceutical, defense, computer, health care and financial and information services industries will be discussed. In addition, four days of the hearings will be dedicated to a consideration of consumer protection issues such as interactive television, future telephone and payment technologies, telemarketing fraud and marketing in cyberspace.
All hearings are open to the public.