WASHINGTON—Senators Lee and Klobuchar, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights today issued the following statements on the Department of Justice’s determination that Canadian Pacific’s proposed voting trust “risks irreversible harm” to competition.
 
“I commend and thank the Department of Justice for weighing in on the side of competition in the railway industry,” said Lee. “The Department has confirmed my belief that Canadian Pacific’s proposed voting trust runs counter to long-standing sound merger policy by ‘scrambling the eggs’ before a review of the acquisition has been completed. Doing so would mean that any harm to competition of consumers would be almost impossible to cure.”
 
“I appreciate that the Department of Justice took Senator Lee’s and my request to weigh-in with the Surface Transportation Board on this important issue. The Anti-Trust Division has confirmed my concerns that the proposed voting trust would be bad for competition and bad for consumers. It is my hope that the Surface Transportation Board will listen to the Department of Justice’s thoughtful analysis,” said Klobuchar. “As Assistant Attorney General Baer said so pointedly at the Antitrust Oversight Hearing, the proposed voting trust ‘strikes me as letting the fox into the chicken coop, subject to the investigation later why there are so many feathers laying around.”