Japan antitrust watchdog creates Big Tech bureau in 30 years

Japan's Fair Trade Commission announced Wednesday a significant organizational overhaul designed to strengthen its capacity to oversee Big Tech firms and enforce fair-trading rules for small businesses. The commission plans to establish a new bureau—its first in about 30 years—and restructure its existing bureaus to create a three-bureau system from the current two-bureau model. The Economic Affairs Bureau, which has handled antitrust policy planning and merger reviews, will be split into two separate bureaus. Regional offices will be upgraded into regional bureaus to intensify enforcement against unlawful price-transfer practices.

The catalyst for this restructuring is the December enforcement of two new laws that expanded the commission's mandate substantially. The smartphone software competition promotion law targets the market dominance of Big Tech companies including Google and Apple in the smartphone software market. A revised law on ensuring fair transactions for small and medium-sized businesses creates additional obligations to protect smaller enterprises from unfair trading practices. These two laws together have significantly increased the workload and complexity of the commission's oversight role.

The Fair Trade Commission currently operates with three units: the Secretariat (responsible for overall coordination), the Economic Affairs Bureau (antitrust policy planning and merger reviews), and the Investigation Bureau (suspected violations of the antimonopoly law). The restructuring plan will reorganize these into a three-bureau structure by splitting the Economic Affairs Bureau. To formalize this change, the commission intends to submit a bill revising the antimonopoly law during next year's ordinary session of the Diet, Japan's parliament, which will be required to approve the legislative amendment enabling the restructuring.

Japan's antitrust enforcement landscape shifted in December 2024 with the enforcement of two major laws addressing digital competition and small-business fairness. The smartphone software competition promotion law directly targets the market dominance practices of global platforms Google and Apple, while the revised law strengthens protections for small and medium-sized businesses against unfair transaction practices. These twin mandates have created a substantial increase in the Fair Trade Commission's enforcement obligations, prompting the organizational restructuring announced Wednesday.

The 30-year gap since the last new bureau underscores how rarely Japan's antitrust structure has evolved. By splitting the Economic Affairs Bureau and elevating regional offices, the commission aims to distribute workload and intensify local enforcement against unlawful price-transfer practices. The plan to submit a bill during next year's ordinary Diet session indicates the government views this as a priority institutional response to the new regulatory environment created by the December laws.

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