With S. 2297 we will be able to expand this kind of cooperation, to come closer to the day when cartels can no longer prey on the American market from safe havens abroad. All of the antitrust agreements we have entered into in the past with some of our foreign counterparts fall short, because they are limited by existing law. None of these agreements allows the enforcement agencies to share investigative information whose confidentiality is protected under national law. And none of them allows an antitrust agency to obtain information from private parties on a compulsory basis to assist an antitrust investigation in the other country. The vital importance of cooperation and access to foreign-located evidence has been recognized in other areas of economic law, where there are cooperative arrangements for access to foreign evidence that far surpass what can be done under present law in antitrust enforcement.
Similar arrangements exist for tax law enforcement.
We need to be able to ask our foreign counterparts for information in their investigative files. We need to be able to ask our foreign counterparts to obtain information for us from companies and individuals in their territory. And in order to get that kind of cooperation, we need legislation that will allow us to reciprocate. First, S. 2297 would help us get evidence that foreign antitrust authorities have gathered in their own antitrust investigations that is relevant to a violation of our antitrust laws. The bill would allow the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to reciprocate by responding to requests from foreign antitrust authorities for investigative information that cannot be disclosed to them today because of confidentiality provisions in the Antitrust Civil Process Act, grand jury secrecy rules, and comparable provisions in the Federal Trade Commission Act.