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The story
The Fair Trade Commission has launched a mandatory investigation into suspected violations of the Antimonopoly Act by Japan’s four major beer makers over an alleged price cartel, sources say. At meetings where section-chief-level employees from each company discussed shipping prices, they are believed to have shared price lists broken down by product size. On 5channel, commenters split between those flatly calling it “an obvious case of collusion” and those who shrugged it off with “every industry does this.” Some also suggested the story is getting little coverage because the beer industry is a major TV advertising sponsor.
Thu, Oct 8, 8:53 AM JST
Kyodo News
In the price cartel case involving Japan’s four major beer makers — now under mandatory investigation by the Fair Trade Commission on suspicion of violating the Antimonopoly Act — sales representatives from each company are believed to have discussed shipping prices while sharing price lists at meetings, sources told reporters on the 8th. It also emerged that these meetings were mainly attended by section-chief-level employees, who appear to have coordinated prices by product size. The commission is working to clarify how decisions were made on the timing of price revisions and the size of price hikes by analyzing seized documents.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
This is about as bad as it gets
This is a textbook cartel if there ever was one
Honestly weird it wasn't a problem until now
Guess it felt like "safety in numbers, we're the almighty beer companies, look how much tax we pay"
But the media's biggest sponsor is beer, so this'll blow over fast
Stations like TV Asahi usually make a huge fuss over stuff like this, but since it involves their parent company, they're just ignoring it
Yeah, they're all over the commercials
They've really got pull
But isn't this how every industry works?
It's basically the same handful of players everywhere
I mean
every industry does this
the Fair Trade Commission knows it too, and still goes after it
>"We'll fully cooperate with the investigation"
That's exactly the kind of line a guilty party says
Nothing changes until people start buying Chinese or Southeast Asian beer instead
That's the more surprising part to me
Just scapegoats thrown under the bus while the top brass walk free (lit. "cutting off the lizard's tail")
Tell me exactly which phone plans are identical then
I don't drink, so I have no idea
Orion, the one from Okinawa
(door slides open) "I heard everything! Mankind is doomed!"
Boring. Your story was boring.
Yamada, take away all his cushions! (catchphrase from the comedy show Shōten, where a bad joke costs you your sitting cushion)
Wasn't it the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that was furious at the three big carriers over something like this?
Though Rakuten got left out of that one lol
Wasn't that something other than the Antimonopoly Act? If they were actually charged under it, show me a source
Forget "prohibiting" monopolies — Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is actively promoting them
Like I said, show me actual proof they colluded. No proof, no case — that's just a baseless accusation
isn't the rice industry looking pretty shady lately too?
Turns out retailers were making the biggest profit off rice, so everyone shut up about that
Harahettaa (a riff on "hara hetta" — "I'm hungry")
Instant ramen, ham, and gasoline are under suspicion too
Stores, please stock more imported beer and give consumers some actual choice
Funny thing is, the big retailers already tripped over their own feet pushing Korean private-label beer
Even rushing back to domestic brands now won't wash off the image that stuck
Because it counts as tax evasion
Plus there've been a lot of fatal oxygen-deprivation accidents too
That's the thing — they stopped competing
It's the opposite lol
"Let's quit the price wars and the R&D arms race"
"People are drinking less and less, so let's stop wasting money on that stuff"
"Let's just get along" — that's not competing, that's colluding
If this is fine, then we don't even need the Fair Trade Commission anymore
Every industry is effectively an oligopoly at this point
Making sure the law guarantees healthy market competition —
isn't that supposed to be the government's actual job?
Under a free-market economy, state intervention is supposed to be off-limits
Most Japanese people don't seem to realize it, but bureaucrat-led economic control has continued unbroken since the wartime era
So price controls that don't match the state's own intentions just aren't allowed
The smartphone pricing case is a classic example
These days you can find even domestic beer selling for a borderline insane 1,000+ yen for a 350ml can
If we're going to talk about fair market principles for beer, rationalizing the liquor tax should come first
Background and key points of this story
At the heart of this case is whether the conduct amounts to an “unreasonable restraint of trade” (cartel) banned under the Antimonopoly Act. The Fair Trade Commission is still analyzing seized documents to determine how shipping prices and price hikes were decided — no charges have actually been filed yet. Several commenters argued that “other industries like phones, rice, and gas are just as bad,” but that doesn’t make a cartel any less serious — sharing price lists and coordinating on shipping prices is potentially illegal under antitrust law regardless of industry. Many also linked the light media coverage to the beer industry’s status as a major TV sponsor, but that connection is speculation, not something established as fact in the article.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Big 4 Beer Makers May Have Shared Price Lists — Cartel Suspicions Center on Manager-Level Meetings.”
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