Anti-Monopoly Regulation and Its Improvement on the Abuse of Market Dominance in the API Industry

The abuse of market dominance in the API industry frequently occurs, including refusal to trade, unfair high prices, tying, attaching unreasonable trading conditions, and restrictive trading behaviors. The reason for this is closely related to institutional characteristics, economic reasons, and the special attributes of the pharmaceutical industry. In the current solution to this problem, there is still a significant controversy over the punishment targets caused by the exclusive distribution model of the API industry. The punishment standards for antitrust in the API market are not clear, and even the reverse effect of antitrust punishment has emerged, namely the dilemma of increasing drug prices. Therefore, it is advocated to determine the responsible parties for the abuse of market dominance based on the nature of competitive relationships, in order to prevent relevant responsible parties from regulating and escaping; determine the penalty standard for sales based on the scope of relevant market; relax the regulation of market access for API to promote competition in the API market.