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Petitioners are 21 Japanese corporations or Japanese-controlled American corporations that manufacture and/or sell "consumer electronic products" (CEPs) (primarily television sets). Respondents are American corporations that manufacture and sell television sets. In 1974, respondents brought an action in Federal District Court, alleging that petitioners, over a 20-year period, had illegally conspired to drive American firms from the American CEP market by engaging in a scheme to fix and maintain artificially high prices for television sets sold by petitioners in Japan and, at the same time, to fix and maintain low prices for the sets exported to and sold in the United States. Respondents claim that various portions of this scheme violated, inter alia, 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act, and 73 of the Wilson Tariff Act. After several years of discovery, petitioners moved for summary judgment on all claims. The District Court then directed the parties to file statements listing all the documentary evidence that would be offered if the case went to trial. After the statements were filed, the court found the bulk of the evidence on which respondents relied was inadmissible, that the admissible evidence did not raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of the alleged conspiracy, and that any inference of conspiracy was unreasonable. Summary judgment therefore was granted in petitioners' favor. The Court of Appeals reversed. After determining that much of the evidence excluded by the District Court was admissible, the Court of Appeals held that the District Court erred in granting a summary judgment and that there was both direct and circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy. Based on inferences drawn from the evidence, the Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market.
The Court of Appeals did not apply proper standards in evaluating the District Court's decision to grant petitioners' motion for summary judgment. Pp. 582-598.
(a) The "direct evidence" on which the Court of Appeals relied - petitioners' alleged supracompetitive pricing in Japan, the "five company [475 U.S. 574, 575] rule" by which each Japanese producer was permitted to sell only to five American distributors, and the "check prices" (minimum prices fixed by agreement with the Japanese Government for CEPs exported to the United States) insofar as they established minimum prices in the United States - cannot by itself give respondents a cognizable claim against petitioners for antitrust damages. Pp. 582-583.
(b) To survive petitioners' motion for a summary judgment, respondents must establish that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether petitioners entered into an illegal conspiracy that caused respondents to suffer a cognizable injury. If the factual context renders respondents' claims implausible, i. e., claims that make no economic sense, respondents must offer more persuasive evidence to support their claims than would otherwise be necessary. To survive a motion for a summary judgment, a plaintiff seeking damages for a violation of 1 of the Sherman Act must present evidence "that tends to exclude the possibility" that the alleged conspirators acted independently. Thus, respondents here must show that the inference of a conspiracy is reasonable in light of the competing inferences of independent action or collusive action that could not have harmed respondents. Pp. 585-588.
(c) Predatory pricing conspiracies are by nature speculative. They require the conspirators to sustain substantial losses in order to recover uncertain gains. The alleged conspiracy is therefore implausible. Moreover, the record discloses that the alleged conspiracy has not succeeded in over two decades of operation. This is strong evidence that the conspiracy does not in fact exist. The possibility that petitioners have obtained supracompetitive profits in the Japanese market does not alter this assessment. Pp. 588-593.
(d) Mistaken inferences in cases such as this one are especially costly, because they chill the very conduct that the antitrust laws are designed to protect. There is little reason to be concerned that by granting summary judgment in cases where the evidence of conspiracy is speculative or ambiguous, courts will encourage conspiracies. Pp. 593-595.
(e) The Court of Appeals erred in two respects: the "direct evidence" on which it relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy, and the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing. In the absence of any rational motive to conspire, neither petitioners' pricing practices, their conduct in the Japanese market, nor their agreements respecting prices and distributions in the American market sufficed to create a "genuine issue for trial" under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(e). On remand, the Court of Appeals may consider whether there is other, unambiguous evidence of the alleged conspiracy. Pp. 595-598.
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and MARSHALL, REHNQUIST, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ., joined, post, p. 598.
[ Footnote * ] Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the Government of Japan by Stephen M. Shapiro; and for the American Association of Exporters and Importers et al. by Robert Herzstein and Hadrian R. Katz.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the Government of Australia et al. by Mark R. Joelson and Joseph P. Griffin; and for the Semiconductor Industry Association by Joseph R. Creighton.
Stating the facts of this case is a daunting task. The opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit runs to 69 pages; the primary opinion of the District Court is more than three times as long. In re Japanese Electronic Products [475 U.S. 574, 577] Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238 (CA3 1983); 513 F. Supp. 1100 (ED Pa. 1981). Two respected District Judges each have authored a number of opinions in this case; the published ones alone would fill an entire volume of the Federal Supplement. In addition, the parties have filed a 40-volume appendix in this Court that is said to contain the essence of the evidence on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals based their respective decisions.
Petitioners, defendants below, are 21 corporations that manufacture or sell "consumer electronic products" (CEPs) - for the most part, television sets. Petitioners include both Japanese manufacturers of CEPs and American firms, controlled by Japanese parents, that sell the Japanese-manufactured products. Respondents, plaintiffs below, are Zenith Radio Corporation (Zenith) and National Union Electric Corporation (NUE). Zenith is an American firm that manufactures and sells television sets. NUE is the corporate successor to Emerson Radio Company, an American firm that manufactured and sold television sets until 1970, when it withdrew from the market after sustaining substantial losses. Zenith and NUE began this lawsuit in 1974, 1 claiming that petitioners had illegally conspired to drive [475 U.S. 574, 578] American firms from the American CEP market. According to respondents, the gist of this conspiracy was a "`scheme to raise, fix and maintain artificially high prices for television receivers sold by [petitioners] in Japan and, at the same time, to fix and maintain low prices for television receivers exported to and sold in the United States.'" 723 F.2d, at 251 (quoting respondents' preliminary pretrial memorandum). These "low prices" were allegedly at levels that produced substantial losses for petitioners. 513 F. Supp., at 1125. The conspiracy allegedly began as early as 1953, and according to respondents was in full operation by sometime in the late 1960's. Respondents claimed that various portions of this scheme violated 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act, 73 of the Wilson Tariff Act, and the Antidumping Act of 1916.
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed. 4 The court began by examining the District Court's evidentiary rulings, and determined that much of the evidence excluded by the District Court was in fact admissible. 723 F.2d, at 260-303. These evidentiary rulings are not before us. See 471 U.S. 1002 (1985) (limiting grant of certiorari).
2. Petitioners had relatively higher fixed costs than their American counterparts, and therefore needed to [475 U.S. 574, 581] operate at something approaching full capacity in order to make a profit. Ibid.
Respondents nevertheless argue that these supposed conspiracies, if not themselves grounds for recovery of antitrust damages, are circumstantial evidence of another conspiracy that is cognizable: a conspiracy to monopolize the American market by means of pricing below the market level. 7 The thrust of respondents' argument is that petitioners used their monopoly profits from the Japanese market to fund a concerted campaign to price predatorily and thereby drive respondents and other American manufacturers of CEPs out of business. Once successful, according to respondents, petitioners would cartelize the American CEP market, restricting output and raising prices above the level that fair competition would produce. The resulting monopoly profits, respondents contend, would more than compensate petitioners for the losses they incurred through years of pricing below market level.
The Court of Appeals found that respondents' allegation of a horizontal conspiracy to engage in predatory pricing, 8 [475 U.S. 574, 585] if proved, 9 would be a per se violation of 1 of the Sherman Act. 723 F.2d, at 306. Petitioners did not appeal from that conclusion. The issue in this case thus becomes whether respondents adduced sufficient evidence in support of their theory to survive summary judgment. We therefore examine the principles that govern the summary judgment determination.
To survive petitioners' motion for summary judgment, 10 respondents must establish that there is a genuine issue of material [475 U.S. 574, 586] fact as to whether petitioners entered into an illegal conspiracy that caused respondents to suffer a cognizable injury. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(e); 11 First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U.S. 253, 288 -289 (1968). This showing has two components. First, respondents must show more than a conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws; they must show an injury to them resulting from the illegal conduct. Respondents charge petitioners with a whole host of conspiracies in restraint of trade. Supra, at 582-583. Except for the alleged conspiracy to monopolize the American market through predatory pricing, these alleged conspiracies could not have caused respondents to suffer an "antitrust injury," Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S., at 489 , because they actually tended to benefit respondents. Supra, at 582-583. Therefore, unless, in context, evidence of these "other" conspiracies raises a genuine issue concerning the existence of a predatory pricing conspiracy, that evidence cannot defeat petitioners' summary judgment motion.
Second, the issue of fact must be "genuine." Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 56(c), (e). When the moving party has carried its burden under Rule 56(c), 12 its opponent must do more than simply show that there is some metaphysical doubt as to the material facts. See DeLuca v. Atlantic Refining Co., 176 F.2d 421, 423 (CA2 1949) (L. Hand, J.), cert. denied, 338 U.S. 943 (1950); 10A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure 2727 (1983); Clark, Special Problems [475 U.S. 574, 587] in Drafting and Interpreting Procedural Codes and Rules, 3 Vand. L. Rev. 493, 504-505 (1950). Cf. Sartor v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp., 321 U.S. 620, 627 (1944). In the language of the Rule, the nonmoving party must come forward with "specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial." Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(e) (emphasis added). See also Advisory Committee Note to 1963 Amendment of Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(e), 28 U.S.C. App., p. 626 (purpose of summary judgment is to "pierce the pleadings and to assess the proof in order to see whether there is a genuine need for trial"). Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the non-moving party, there is no "genuine issue for trial." Cities Service, supra, at 289.
It follows from these settled principles that if the factual context renders respondents' claim implausible - if the claim is one that simply makes no economic sense - respondents must come forward with more persuasive evidence to support their claim than would otherwise be necessary. Cities Service is instructive. The issue in that case was whether proof of the defendant's refusal to deal with the plaintiff supported an inference that the defendant willingly had joined an illegal boycott. Economic factors strongly suggested that the defendant had no motive to join the alleged conspiracy. 391 U.S., at 278 -279. The Court acknowledged that, in isolation, the defendant's refusal to deal might well have sufficed to create a triable issue. Id., at 277. But the refusal to deal had to be evaluated in its factual context. Since the defendant lacked any rational motive to join the alleged boycott, and since its refusal to deal was consistent with the defendant's independent interest, the refusal to deal could not by itself support a finding of antitrust liability. Id., at 280.
Respondents correctly note that "[o]n summary judgment the inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts . . . must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion." United States v. Diebold, Inc., [475 U.S. 574, 588] 369 U.S. 654, 655 (1962). But antitrust law limits the range of permissible inferences from ambiguous evidence in a 1 case. Thus, in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752 (1984), we held that conduct as consistent with permissible competition as with illegal conspiracy does not, standing alone, support an inference of antitrust conspiracy. Id., at 764. See also Cities Service, supra, at 280. To survive a motion for summary judgment or for a directed verdict, a plaintiff seeking damages for a violation of 1 must present evidence "that tends to exclude the possibility" that the alleged conspirators acted independently. 465 U.S., at 764 . Respondents in this case, in other words, must show that the inference of conspiracy is reasonable in light of the competing inferences of independent action or collusive action that could not have harmed respondents. See Cities Service, supra, at 280.
See also McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J. Law & Econ. 289, 295-297 (1980). As this explanation shows, the success of such schemes is inherently uncertain: the short-run loss is definite, but the long-run gain depends on successfully neutralizing the competition. Moreover, it is not enough simply to achieve monopoly power, as monopoly pricing may breed quick entry by new competitors eager to share in the excess profits. The success of any predatory scheme depends on maintaining monopoly power for long enough both to recoup the predator's losses and to harvest some additional gain. Absent some assurance that the hoped-for monopoly will materialize, and that it can be sustained for a significant period of time, "[t]he predator must make a substantial investment with no assurance that it will pay off." Easter-brook, Predatory Strategies and Counterstrategies, 48 U. Chi. L. Rev. 263, 268 (1981). For this reason, there is a consensus among commentators that predatory pricing schemes are rarely tried, and even more rarely successful. See, e. g., Bork, supra, at 149-155; Areeda & Turner, Predatory Pricing and Related Practices Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 697, 699 (1975); Easterbrook, supra; Koller, The Myth of Predatory Pricing - An Empirical Study, [475 U.S. 574, 590] 4 Antitrust Law & Econ. Rev. 105 (1971); McGee, Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N. J.) Case, 1 J. Law & Econ. 137 (1958); McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J. Law & Econ., at 292-294. See also Northeastern Telephone Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 651 F.2d 76, 88 (CA2 1981) ("[N]owhere in the recent outpouring of literature on the subject do commentators suggest that [predatory] pricing is either common or likely to increase"), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943 (1982).
The alleged conspiracy's failure to achieve its ends in the two decades of its asserted operation is strong evidence that the conspiracy does not in fact exist. Since the losses in such a conspiracy accrue before the gains, they must be "repaid" with interest. And because the alleged losses have accrued over the course of two decades, the conspirators could well require a correspondingly long time to recoup. Maintaining supracompetitive prices in turn depends on the continued cooperation of the conspirators, on the inability of other would-be competitors to enter the market, and (not incidentally) on the conspirators' ability to escape antitrust liability for their minimum price-fixing cartel. 16 Each of these factors weighs more heavily as the time needed to recoup losses grows. If the losses have been substantial - as would likely be necessary [475 U.S. 574, 593] in order to drive out the competition 17 - petitioners would most likely have to sustain their cartel for years simply to break even.
In Monsanto, we emphasized that courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible, because the effect of such practices is often to deter procompetitive conduct. Monsanto, 465 U.S., at 762 -764. [475 U.S. 574, 594] Respondents, petitioners' competitors, seek to hold petitioners liable for damages caused by the alleged conspiracy to cut prices. Moreover, they seek to establish this conspiracy indirectly, through evidence of other combinations (such as the check-price agreements and the five company rule) whose natural tendency is to raise prices, and through evidence of rebates and other price-cutting activities that respondents argue tend to prove a combination to suppress prices. 19 But cutting prices in order to increase business often is the very essence of competition. Thus, mistaken inferences in cases such as this one are especially costly, because they chill the very conduct the antitrust laws are designed to protect. See Monsanto, supra, at 763-764. "[W]e must be concerned lest a rule or precedent that authorizes a search for a particular type of undesirable pricing behavior end up by discouraging legitimate price competition." Barry Wright Corp. v. ITT Grinnell Corp., 724 F.2d 227, 234 (CA1 1983).
In most cases, this concern must be balanced against the desire that illegal conspiracies be identified and punished. That balance is, however, unusually one-sided in cases such as this one. As we earlier explained, supra, at 588-593, predatory pricing schemes require conspirators to suffer losses in order eventually to realize their illegal gains; moreover, the [475 U.S. 574, 595] gains depend on a host of uncertainties, making such schemes more likely to fail than to succeed. These economic realities tend to make predatory pricing conspiracies self-deterring: unlike most other conduct that violates the antitrust laws, failed predatory pricing schemes are costly to the conspirators. See Easterbrook, The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Texas L. Rev. 1, 26 (1984). Finally, unlike predatory pricing by a single firm, successful predatory pricing conspiracies involving a large number of firms can be identified and punished once they succeed, since some form of minimum price-fixing agreement would be necessary in order to reap the benefits of predation. Thus, there is little reason to be concerned that by granting summary judgment in cases where the evidence of conspiracy is speculative or ambiguous, courts will encourage such conspiracies.
As our discussion in Part IV-A shows, petitioners had no motive to enter into the alleged conspiracy. To the contrary, as presumably rational businesses, petitioners had every incentive not to engage in the conduct with which they are charged, for its likely effect would be to generate losses for petitioners with no corresponding gains. Cf. Cities Service, 391 U.S., at 279 . The Court of Appeals did not take account of the absence of a plausible motive to enter into the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy. It focused instead on whether there was "direct evidence of concert of action." 723 F.2d, at 304. The Court of Appeals erred in two respects: (i) the "direct evidence" on which the court relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy; and (ii) the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing.
The "direct evidence" on which the court relied was evidence of other combinations, not of a predatory pricing conspiracy. Evidence that petitioners conspired to raise prices in Japan provides little, if any, support for respondents' [475 U.S. 574, 596] claims: a conspiracy to increase profits in one market does not tend to show a conspiracy to sustain losses in another. Evidence that petitioners agreed to fix minimum prices (through the check-price agreements) for the American market actually works in petitioners' favor, because it suggests that petitioners were seeking to place a floor under prices rather than to lower them. The same is true of evidence that petitioners agreed to limit the number of distributors of their products in the American market - the so-called five company rule. That practice may have facilitated a horizontal territorial allocation, see United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U.S. 596 (1972), but its natural effect would be to raise market prices rather than reduce them. 20 Evidence that tends to support any of these collateral conspiracies thus says little, if anything, about the existence of a conspiracy to charge below-market prices in the American market over a period of two decades.
On remand, the Court of Appeals is free to consider whether there is other evidence that is sufficiently unambiguous to permit a trier of fact to find that petitioners conspired to price predatorily for two decades despite the absence of any apparent motive to do so. The evidence must "ten[d] to exclude the possibility" that petitioners underpriced respondents to compete for business rather than to implement an economically [475 U.S. 574, 598] senseless conspiracy. Monsanto, 465 U.S., at 764 . In the absence of such evidence, there is no "genuine issue for trial" under Rule 56(e), and petitioners are entitled to have summary judgment reinstated.
Our decision makes it unnecessary to reach the sovereign compulsion issue. The heart of petitioners' argument on that issue is that MITI, an agency of the Government of Japan, required petitioners to fix minimum prices for export to the United States, and that petitioners are therefore immune from antitrust liability for any scheme of which those minimum prices were an integral part. As we discussed in Part II, supra, respondents could not have suffered a cognizable injury from any action that raised prices in the American CEP market. If liable at all, petitioners are liable for conduct that is distinct from the check-price agreements. The sovereign compulsion question that both petitioners and the Solicitor General urge us to decide thus is not presented here.
[ Footnote 1 ] NUE had filed its complaint four years earlier, in the District Court for the District of New Jersey. Zenith's complaint was filed separately in 1974, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The two cases were consolidated in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1974.
[ Footnote 2 ] The inadmissible evidence included various government records and reports, Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., 505 F. Supp. 1125 (ED Pa. 1980), business documents offered pursuant to various hearsay exceptions, Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., 505 F. Supp. 1190 (ED Pa. 1980), and a large portion of the expert testimony that respondents proposed to introduce. Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., 505 F. Supp. 1313 (ED Pa. 1981).
[ Footnote 3 ] The District Court ruled separately that petitioners were entitled to summary judgment on respondents' claims under the Antidumping Act of 1916. Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., 494 F. Supp. 1190 (ED Pa. 1980). Respondents appealed this ruling, and the Court of Appeals reversed in a separate opinion issued the same day as the opinion concerning respondents' other claims. In re Japanese Electronic Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 319 (CA3 1983).
[ Footnote 4 ] As to 3 of the 24 defendants, the Court of Appeals affirmed the entry of summary judgment. Petitioners are the 21 defendants who remain in the case.
[ Footnote 5 ] In addition to these inferences, the court noted that there was expert opinion evidence that petitioners' export sales "generally were at prices which produced losses, often as high as twenty-five percent on sales." 723 F.2d, at 311. The court did not identify any direct evidence of below-cost pricing; nor did it place particularly heavy reliance on this aspect of the expert evidence. See n. 19, infra.
[ Footnote 6 ] The Sherman Act does reach conduct outside our borders, but only when the conduct has an effect on American commerce. Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U.S. 690, 704 (1962) ("A conspiracy to monopolize or restrain the domestic or foreign commerce of the United States is not outside the reach of the Sherman Act just because part of the conduct complained of occurs in foreign countries"). The effect [475 U.S. 574, 583] on which respondents rely is the artificially depressed level of prices for CEPs in the United States.
Petitioners' alleged cartelization of the Japanese market could not have caused that effect over a period of some two decades. Once petitioners decided, as respondents allege, to reduce output and raise prices in the Japanese market, they had the option of either producing fewer goods or selling more goods in other markets. The most plausible conclusion is that petitioners chose the latter option because it would be more profitable than the former. That choice does not flow from the cartelization of the Japanese market. On the contrary, were the Japanese market perfectly competitive petitioners would still have to choose whether to sell goods over-seas, and would still presumably make that choice based on their profit expectations. For this reason, respondents' theory of recovery depends on proof of the asserted price-cutting conspiracy in this country.
[ Footnote 7 ] Respondents also argue that the check prices, the five company rule, includes monopolization of the American market through predatory pricing. The argument is mistaken. However one decides to describe the contours of the asserted conspiracy - whether there is one conspiracy or several - respondents must show that the conspiracy caused them an injury for which the antitrust laws provide relief. Associated General Contractors of California, Inc. v. Carpenters, 459 U.S. 519, 538 -540 (1983); Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 488 -489 (1977); see also Note, Antitrust Standing, Antitrust Injury, and the Per Se Standard, 93 Yale L. J. 1309 (1984). That showing depends in turn on proof that petitioners conspired to price predatorily in the American market, since the other conduct involved in the alleged conspiracy cannot have caused such an injury.
[ Footnote 8 ] Throughout this opinion, we refer to the asserted conspiracy as one to price "predatorily." This term has been used chiefly in cases in which a single firm, having a dominant share of the relevant market, cuts its prices in order to force competitors out of the market, or perhaps to deter potential entrants from coming in. E. g., Southern Pacific Communications Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 238 U.S. App. D.C. 309, 331-336, 740 F.2d 980, 1002-1007 (1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1005 [475 U.S. 574, 585] (1985). In such cases, "predatory pricing" means pricing below some appropriate measure of cost. E. g., Barry Wright Corp. v. ITT Grinnell Corp., 724 F.2d 227, 232-235 (CA1 1983); see Utah Pie Co. v. Continental Baking Co., 386 U.S. 685, 698 , 701, 702, n. 14 (1967).
There is a good deal of debate, both in the cases and in the law reviews, about what "cost" is relevant in such cases. We need not resolve this debate here, because unlike the cases cited above, this is a Sherman Act 1 case. For purposes of this case, it is enough to note that respondents have not suffered an antitrust injury unless petitioners conspired to drive respondents out of the relevant markets by (i) pricing below the level necessary to sell their products, or (ii) pricing below some appropriate measure of cost. An agreement without these features would either leave respondents in the same position as would market forces or would actually benefit respondents by raising market prices. Respondents therefore may not complain of conspiracies that, for example, set maximum prices above market levels, or that set minimum prices at any level.
[ Footnote 9 ] We do not consider whether recovery should ever be available on a theory such as respondents' when the pricing in question is above some measure of incremental cost. See generally Areeda & Turner, Predatory Pricing and Related Practices Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 697, 709-718 (1975) (discussing cost-based test for use in 2 cases). As a practical matter, it may be that only direct evidence of below-cost pricing is sufficient to overcome the strong inference that rational businesses would not enter into conspiracies such as this one. See Part IV-A, infra.
[ Footnote 10 ] Respondents argued before the District Court that petitioners had failed to carry their initial burden under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c) of demonstrating the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. See Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 157 (1970). Cf. Catrett v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 244 U.S. App. D.C. 160, 756 F.2d 181, [475 U.S. 574, 586] cert. granted, 474 U.S. 944 (1985). That issue was resolved in petitioners' favor, and is not before us.
[ Footnote 13 ] NUE's complaint alleges that petitioners' conspiracy began as early as 1960; the starting date used in Zenith's complaint is 1953. NUE Complaint § 52; Zenith Complaint § 39.
[ Footnote 14 ] During the same period, the number of American firms manufacturing television sets declined from 19 to 13. 5 App. to Brief for Appellant in No. 81-2331 (CA3), p. 1961a. This decline continued a trend that began at least by 1960, when petitioners' sales in the United States market were negligible. Ibid. See Zenith Complaint §§ 35, 37.
"The plaintiffs [in this case] maintain that for the last fifteen years or more at least ten Japanese manufacturers have sold TV sets at less than cost in order to drive United States firms out of business. Such conduct cannot possibly produce profits by harming competition, however. If the Japanese firms drive some United States firms out of business, they could not [475 U.S. 574, 592] recoup. Fifteen years of losses could be made up only by very high prices for the indefinite future. (The losses are like investments, which must be recovered with compound interest.) If the defendants should try to raise prices to such a level, they would attract new competition. There are no barriers to entry into electronics, as the proliferation of computer and audio firms shows. The competition would come from resurgent United States firms, from other foreign firms (Korea and many other nations make TV sets), and from defendants themselves. In order to recoup, the Japanese firms would need to suppress competition among themselves. On plaintiffs' theory, the cartel would need to last at least thirty years, far longer than any in history, even when cartels were not illegal. None should be sanguine about the prospects of such a cartel, given each firm's incentive to shave price and expand its share of sales. The predation recoupment story therefore does not make sense, and we are left with the more plausible inference that the Japanese firms did not sell below cost in the first place. They were just engaged in hard competition." Easter-brook, The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Texas L. Rev. 1, 26-27 (1984) (footnotes omitted).
[ Footnote 16 ] The alleged predatory scheme makes sense only if petitioners can recoup their losses. In light of the large number of firms involved here, petitioners can achieve this only by engaging in some form of price fixing after they have succeeded in driving competitors from the market. Such price fixing would, of course, be an independent violation of 1 of the Sherman Act. United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150 (1940).
[ Footnote 17 ] The predators' losses must actually increase as the conspiracy nears its objective: the greater the predators' market share, the more products the predators sell; but since every sale brings with it a loss, an increase in market share also means an increase in predatory losses.
[ Footnote 18 ] The same is true of any supposed excess production capacity that petitioners may have possessed. The existence of plant capacity that exceeds domestic demand does tend to establish the ability to sell products abroad. It does not, however, provide a motive for selling at prices lower than necessary to obtain sales; nor does it explain why petitioners would be willing to lose money in the United States market without some reasonable prospect of recouping their investment.
[ Footnote 19 ] Respondents also rely on an expert study suggesting that petitioners have sold their products in the American market at substantial losses. The relevant study is not based on actual cost data; rather, it consists of expert opinion based on a mathematical construction that in turn rests on assumptions about petitioners' costs. The District Court analyzed those assumptions in some detail and found them both implausible and inconsistent with record evidence. Zenith Radio Corp. v. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., 505 F. Supp., at 1356-1363. Although the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court's finding that the expert report was inadmissible, the court did not disturb the District Court's analysis of the factors that substantially undermine the probative value of that evidence. See 723 F.2d, at 277-282. We find the District Court's analysis persuasive. Accordingly, in our view the expert opinion evidence of below-cost pricing has little probative value in comparison with the economic factors, discussed in Part IV-A, supra, that suggest that such conduct is irrational.
[ Footnote 20 ] The Court of Appeals correctly reasoned that the five company rule might tend to insulate petitioners from competition with each other. 723 F.2d, at 306. But this effect is irrelevant to a conspiracy to price predatorily. Petitioners have no incentive to underprice each other if they already are pricing below the level at which they could sell their goods. The far more plausible inference from a customer allocation agreement such as the five company rule is that petitioners were conspiring to raise prices, by limiting their ability to take sales away from each other. Respondents - petitioners' competitors - suffer no harm from a conspiracy to raise prices. Supra, at 582-583. Moreover, it seems very unlikely that the five company rule had any significant effect of any kind, since the "rule" permitted petitioners to sell to their American subsidiaries, and did not limit the number of distributors to which the subsidiaries could resell. 513 F. Supp., at 1190.
[ Footnote 21 ] We do not imply that, if petitioners had had a plausible reason to conspire, ambiguous conduct could suffice to create a triable issue of conspiracy. Our decision in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752 (1984), establishes that conduct that is as consistent with permissible competition as with illegal conspiracy does not, without more, support even an inference of conspiracy. Id., at 763-764. See supra, at 588.
It is indeed remarkable that the Court, in the face of the long and careful opinion of the Court of Appeals, reaches the result it does. The Court of Appeals faithfully followed the relevant precedents, including First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U.S. 253 (1968), and Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752 (1984), and it kept firmly in mind the principle that proof of a conspiracy should not be fragmented, see Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U.S. 690, 699 (1962). After surveying the massive record, including very [475 U.S. 574, 599] significant evidence that the District Court erroneously had excluded, the Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence taken as a whole creates a genuine issue of fact whether petitioners engaged in a conspiracy in violation of 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act. In my view, the Court of Appeals' opinion more than adequately supports this judgment.
"[T]he Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market. The court apparently did not consider whether it was as plausible to conclude [475 U.S. 574, 600] that petitioners' price-cutting behavior was independent and not conspiratorial." Ante, at 581.
In a similar vein, the Court summarizes Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., supra, as holding that "courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible . . . ." Ante, at 593. Such language suggests that a judge hearing a defendant's motion for summary judgment in an antitrust case should go beyond the traditional summary judgment inquiry and decide for himself whether the weight of the evidence favors the plaintiff. Cities Service and Monsanto do not stand for any such proposition. Each of those cases simply held that a particular piece of evidence standing alone was insufficiently probative to justify sending a case to the jury. 1 These holdings in no way undermine [475 U.S. 574, 601] the doctrine that all evidence must be construed in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment.
In defining what respondents must show in order to recover, the Court makes assumptions that invade the factfinder's province. The Court states with very little discussion that respondents can recover under 1 of the Sherman Act only if they prove that "petitioners conspired to drive respondents out of the relevant markets by (i) pricing below the level necessary to sell their products, or (ii) pricing below some appropriate measure of cost." Ante, at 585, n. 8. This statement is premised on the assumption that "[a]n agreement without these features would either leave respondents in the same position as would market forces or would actually benefit respondents by raising market prices." Ibid. In making this assumption, the Court ignores the contrary conclusions of respondents' expert DePodwin, whose report in very relevant part was erroneously excluded by the District Court.
The Court, in discussing the unlikelihood of a predatory conspiracy, also consistently assumes that petitioners valued profit-maximization over growth. See, e. g., ante, at 595. In light of the evidence that petitioners sold their goods in this country at substantial losses over a long period of time, see Part III-B, infra, I believe that this is an assumption that should be argued to the factfinder, not decided by the Court.
In reversing the Third Circuit's judgment, the Court identifies two alleged errors: "(i) [T]he `direct evidence' on which the [Court of Appeals] relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy; and (ii) the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing." Ante, at 595. The Court's position is without substance.
The Court's second charge of error is that the Third Circuit was not sufficiently skeptical of respondents' allegation that petitioners engaged in predatory pricing conspiracy. But [475 U.S. 574, 606] the Third Circuit is not required to engage in academic discussions about predation; it is required to decide whether respondents' evidence creates a genuine issue of material fact. The Third Circuit did its job, and remanding the case so that it can do the same job again is simply pointless.
It is misleading for the Court to state that the Court of Appeals "did not disturb the District Court's analysis of the factors that substantially undermine the probative value of [evidence in the DePodwin Report respecting below-cost sales]." Ibid. The Third Circuit held that the exclusion of the portion of the DePodwin Report regarding below-cost pricing was erroneous because "the trial court ignored DePodwin's uncontradicted affidavit that all data relied on in his report were of the type on which experts in his field would reasonably rely." 723 F.2d, at 282. In short, the Third Circuit found DePodwin's affidavit sufficient to create a genuine factual issue regarding the correctness of his conclusion that petitioners sold below cost over a long period of time. Having made this determination, the court saw no need - nor do I - to address the District Court's analysis point by point. The District Court's criticisms of DePodwin's [475 U.S. 574, 607] methods are arguments that a factfinder should consider.
[ Footnote 1 ] The Court adequately summarizes the quite fact-specific holding in Cities Service. Ante, at 587.
In Monsanto, the Court held that a manufacturer's termination of a price-cutting distributor after receiving a complaint from another distributor is not, standing alone, sufficient to create a jury question. 465 U.S., at 763 -764. To understand this holding, it is important to realize that under United States v. Colgate & Co., 250 U.S. 300 (1919), it is permissible for a manufacturer to announce retail prices in advance and terminate those who fail to comply, but that under Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U.S. 373 (1911), it is impermissible for the manufacturer and its distributors to agree on the price at which the distributors will sell the goods. Thus, a manufacturer's termination of a price-cutting distributor after receiving a complaint from another distributor is lawful under Colgate, unless the termination is pursuant to a shared understanding between the manufacturer and its distributors respecting enforcement of a resale price maintenance scheme. Monsanto holds that to establish liability under Dr. Miles, more is needed than evidence of behavior that is consistent with a distributor's exercise of its prerogatives under Colgate. Thus, "[t]here must be evidence that tends to exclude the possibility that the manufacturer and nonterminated distributors were acting independently." 465 U.S., at 764 . Monsanto does not hold that if a terminated dealer produces some further evidence of conspiracy beyond the bare fact of postcomplaint termination, the judge hearing a motion for summary judgment should balance all the evidence pointing toward conspiracy against all the evidence pointing toward independent action.
"We can therefore conclude that the American manufacturers of television receivers would have made larger sales at higher prices in the absence of the Japanese cartel agreements. Thus, the collusive behavior of Japanese television manufacturers resulted in a very severe injury to those American television manufacturers, particularly to National Union Electric Corporation, which produced a preponderance of television sets with screen sizes of nineteen inches and lower, especially those in the lower range of prices." 5 App. to Brief for Appellants in No. 81-2331 (CA3), pp. 1629a-1630a.
For a more complete statement of DePodwin's explanation of how the alleged cartel operated, and the harms it caused respondents, see id., at 1609a-1642a. This material is summarized in a chart found id., at 1633a.
"The trial court found that DePodwin did not use economic expertise in reaching the opinion that the defendants participated in a Japanese television [475 U.S. 574, 604] cartel. 505 F. Supp. at 1342-46. We have examined the excluded portions of Parts IV and V in light of the admitted portions, and we conclude that this finding is clearly erroneous. As a result, the court also held the opinions to be unhelpful to the factfinder. What the court in effect did was to eliminate all parts of the report in which the expert economist, after describing the conditions in the respective markets, the opportunities for collusion, the evidence pointing to collusion, the terms of certain undisputed agreements, and the market behavior, expressed the opinion that there was concert of action consistent with plaintiffs' conspiracy theory. Considering the complexity of the economic issues involved, it simply cannot be said that such an opinion would not help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine that fact in issue." In re Japanese Electronics Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238, 280 (1983).
[ Footnote 5 ] I use the Third Circuit's analysis of the five company rule by way of example; the court did an equally careful analysis of the parts the cartel activity in Japan and the check prices could have played in an actionable conspiracy. See generally id., at 303-311.

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