This piece originally appeared in The Sling. Read the original here.
Just weeks after a series of high profile train derailments headlined by the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) decided to double down on the current railroad oligopoly. The STB approved a merger between Canadian Pacific Railway and Kansas City Southern Railway Company, cutting the number of major “Class I” rail companies in the United States from seven down to six. This decision is diametrically opposed to the public interest and seriously undermines trust in rail regulators.
The merger approval clearly violates President Biden’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which explicitly directed the STB to begin rulemaking to make it harder for railroads to engage in anticompetitive practices. The order instructed the chair to “consider rulemakings pertaining to any other relevant matter of competitive access, including bottleneck rates, interchange commitments, or other matters.” Instead, the STB has abetted concentration that makes it harder to regulate.
Because the decision goes against Biden’s overarching competition agenda, the Revolving Door Project today released a letter with RootsAction and FreedomBLOC calling for President Biden to relieve Martin Oberman from his chairmanship at the STB. This backtracking requires a major course correction that can only be achieved by a change in leadership.
Besides being antithetical to one of the defining policies of the Biden administration, the STB’s decision breaks from other parts of the administration. As the FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division have redoubled their efforts to push back on monopolization across the economy, the STB approved the first big freight-rail merger since the 1990s. But it’s not just the FTC and DOJ going in the opposite direction of the STB; Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his Department of Transportation have recently raised their scrutiny of transportation mergers, highlighted by blocking airline consolidation.
And while Buttigieg has not explicitly chimed in on the rail merger, other regulators did, warning the STB against approval. The DOJ Antitrust Division warned against the merger, saying it could “empower the merged railroad to deny shippers access to the lowest cost or fastest end-to-end routings. […] The railroad sector in particular, with its relatively high fixed and sunk costs, often enjoys substantial structural entry barriers and advantages that may facilitate or incentivize anticompetitive behavior.”
Additionally, a majority of the Federal Maritime Commission opposed the merger, arguing that “the proposed consolidation does not ensure that the anticompetitive effects of the transaction outweigh the public interest in meeting significant needs.” As I’ve written before, the FMC has a history of serious dovishness on consolidation, making such a strong position all the more notable. The merger is even being opposed by another railroad; Union Pacific is suing to block the STB’s decision.
Besides undermining the administration’s broader policy agenda, the STB’s decision will also undermine safety in the rail industry. What’s the basis for such a strong claim? The STB’s own analysis found the merger would “slightly increase” risks of derailments. Taking their analysis at its word, even slight increases in such risks seem folly after Norfolk Southern set East Palestine ablaze with a single derailment. That incident highlighted how underequipped and unprepared regulators were to deal with any derailment. Allowing an increase in that risk just to enable more corporate profits is a bad trade for the American people.
Another cost of the merger is less effective oversight. As I wrote in The Sling in March, “More industry concentration makes effective regulation harder. As firms increase in size, they gain more and more of a resource advantage over their regulators. One behemoth corporation can often hire more lawyers and cultivate more relationships with lawmakers in order to obfuscate enforcement measures than multiple smaller ones could.”
Of course, there are corporate-friendly defenders of the merger. The Economist argued that the merger “may end up enhancing competition” because the two rail companies do not directly compete—there are no overlapping tracks—and because the merged entity “will provide the first train lines running from Canadian ports through the heart of the United States into Mexico. This is poppycock: A merger that doesn’t involve head-to-head competitors can still be harmful if it enables the merged firm to engage in anticompetitive behavior such as blocking rival’s market access.
Indeed, The Economist gives the game away in the very next paragraph, admitting the rail “industry is also consolidating, which leads to greater pricing power.” There’s only one consolidation going on and it’s the one they’re seeking to defend. If pricing power will increase simply by virtue of consolidation, that means that even though the current lines don’t overlap, the merger facilitates anti-competitive behavior. Full stop.
This is exactly the point the DOJ made in its statement to the STB as well. As they put it:
Even beyond the elimination of head-to-head competition, mergers that increase market power can harm competition in several ways. The merger can empower the merged railroad to deny shippers access to the lowest cost or fastest end-to-end routings. Likewise, in the absence of a complete refusal to interchange traffic, mergers may enable firms to foreclose competition in other ways, such as raising costs for their rivals through control over inputs or access. Such mergers also can create a more conducive structure for post-merger coordination between direct competitors by facilitating communication or discipline through the new integrated asset. The railroad sector in particular, with its relatively high fixed and sunk costs, often enjoys substantial structural entry barriers and advantages that may facilitate or incentivize anticompetitive behavior. For example, railroads may anticompetitively refuse to interchange traffic and/or favor the newly integrated company’s long-haul route over a more efficient joint line route.
Four of the other five Class I railroads agree, having opposed the merger because of how it would enable the new CPKC to block competitors from accessing important junctions, particularly Houston. This comes after earlier concerns from Union Pacific and BNSF around the Houston terminal. In short, the massive market power the merger grants CPKS will allow for the firm to undermine competition by blocking other railroads from readily accessing interchanges and other rail that Kansas City Southern currently shares with other shippers. Despite the two firms not directly competing in their current routes, the vertical integration creates the opportunity to force business away from other railroads because of the degree of control over their competitors’ ability to operate competing routes.
The Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger undermines administration policy and directly contributes to further anticompetitive practices in the rail industry. It is also likely to cause worse service, job cuts, weaker oversight, and higher prices, among other harms. President Biden should heed his Transportation Department, Justice Department, and Federal Maritime Commission and appoint new leadership at the STB.
Image Credit: “Train” by tejvanphotos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.