Before the mid-1970s, the United States pioneered the regulation of product markets, labor markets, and the environment. But the intellectual and political assaults on social and economic regulation over the past thirty years, a process whose intellectual basis receives careful attention in Jessica Leicht's contribution for this volume, have left American regulators with neither the inclination to enforce the law, or in the case where such inclination persists, the staff to do so. So, for example, competition laws like the Sherman Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Celler-Kefauver Act no longer have much bite, having given way to the idea that market concentration, mergers, and anticompetitive acts do not undermine competition as long as the antitrust division can see a glimmer of potentially contestable markets. Congressional appropriations bills have stripped regulatory bodies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission of personnel and their ability to monitor infractions of the law.

At this historical moment, the main source of market and environmental regulation in the developed world has moved across the Atlantic, to Europe. Indeed, large American multinational corporations that have significant activities in Europe increasingly find themselves having to embed European rules and standards into their practices. So, for example, American firms that engage in anticompetitive behavior or mergers that might erode competition find themselves confronting European competition authorities who are skeptical of their claims that such activities are procompetitive.