Is API an Antitrust Violator Like As You Sow?

November 7th, 2023

Robert Eccles asks in Forbes that if Jim Jordan can call As You Sow and other members of the ESG network a cartel that violates the Sherman Antitrust Act, why can’t the same be said for the American Petroleum Institute?

It is a good question. Here are obvious answers.

API is a trade association for a highly competitive industry, but it is not involved in the restraint of trade. It is not trying to use financial coercion and proxy battles with the declared intention of squeezing another lawful industry out of business. And unlike some asset managers, it is not investing on the side in those very same industries, knowing that its war will create scarcity and swell profits.

If API tries to force its proxy candidates onto the boards of, say, solar power companies with the explicit purpose of eliminating solar power as an industry, then it would be acting in the same was as As You Sow and other Climate 100+ drivers of ESG. And if it then sought huge profits by selling the solutions to the problems it creates for such companies, it would be analogous to Institutional Shareholders Services and Glass Lewis.

I am confident API is not doing any of those things. If it were, Lina Khan would have plucked that low-hanging fruit a long time ago.