MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD., et al., Petitioners v. ZENITH RADIO CORPORATION et al.

475 U.S. 574

106 S.Ct. 1348

89 L.Ed.2d 538

MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD., et al., Petitioners
v.
ZENITH RADIO CORPORATION et al.

No. 83-2004.

Syllabus

Petitioners are 21 Japanese corporations or Japanese-controlled American corporations that manufacture and/or sell “consumer electronic products” (CEPs) (primarily television sets). Respondents are American corporations that manufacture and sell television sets. In 1974, respondents brought an action in Federal District Court, alleging that petitioners, over a 20-year period, had illegally conspired to drive American firms from the American CEP market by engaging in a scheme to fix and maintain artificially high prices for television sets sold by petitioners in Japan and, at the same time, to fix and maintain low prices for the sets exported to and sold in the United States. Respondents claim that various portions of this scheme violated, inter alia, §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, § 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act, and § 73 of the Wilson Tariff Act. After several years of discovery, petitioners moved for summary judgment on all claims. The District Court then directed the parties to file statements listing all the documentary evidence that would be offered if the case went to trial. After the statements were filed, the court found the bulk of the evidence on which respondents relied was inadmissible, that the admissible evidence did not raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of the alleged conspiracy, and that any inference of conspiracy was unreasonable. Summary judgment therefore was granted in petitioners’ favor. The Court of Appeals reversed. After determining that much of the evidence excluded by the District Court was admissible, the Court of Appeals held that the District Court erred in granting a summary judgment and that there was both direct and circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy. Based on inferences drawn from the evidence, the Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market.

Held: The Court of Appeals did not apply proper standards in evaluating the District Court’s decision to grant petitioners’ motion for summary judgment. Pp. 582-598.

(a) The “direct evidence” on which the Court of Appeals relied—petitioners’ alleged supracompetitive pricing in Japan, the “five company rule” by which each Japanese producer was permitted to sell only to five American distributors, and the “check prices” (minimum prices fixed by agreement with the Japanese Government for CEPs exported to the United States) insofar as they established minimum prices in the United States—cannot by itself give respondents a cognizable claim against petitioners for antitrust damages. P. 583-583.

(b) To survive petitioners’ motion for a summary judgment, respondents must establish that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether petitioners entered into an illegal conspiracy that caused respondents to suffer a cognizable injury. If the factual context renders respondents’ claims implausible, i.e., claims that make no economic sense, respondents must offer more persuasive evidence to support their claims than would otherwise be necessary. To survive a motion for a summary judgment, a plaintiff seeking damages for a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act must present evidence “that tends to exclude the possibility” that the alleged conspirators acted independently. Thus, respondents here must show that the inference of a conspiracy is reasonable in light of the competing inferences of independent action or collusive action that could not have harmed respondents. Pp. 585-588.

(c) Predatory pricing conspiracies are by nature speculative. They require the conspirators to sustain substantial losses in order to recover uncertain gains. The alleged conspiracy is therefore implausible. Moreover, the record discloses that the alleged conspiracy has not succeeded in over two decades of operation. This is strong evidence that the conspiracy does not in fact exist. The possibility that petitioners have obtained supracompetitive profits in the Japanese market does not alter this assessment. Pp. 588-593.

(d) Mistaken inferences in cases such as this one are especially costly, because they chill the very conduct that the antitrust laws are designed to protect. There is little reason to be concerned that by granting summary judgment in cases where the evidence of conspiracy is speculative or ambiguous, courts will encourage conspiracies. Pp. 593-595.

(e) The Court of Appeals erred in two respects: the “direct evidence” on which it relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy, and the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing. In the absence of any rational motive to conspire, neither petitioners’ pricing practices, their conduct in the Japanese market, nor their agreements respecting prices and distributions in the American market sufficed to create a “genuine issue for trial” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(e). On remand, the Court of Appeals may consider whether there is other, unambiguous evidence of the alleged conspiracy. Pp. 595-598.

723 F.2d 238 (CA3 1983), reversed and remanded.

POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and MARSHALL, REHNQUIST, and O’CONNOR, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ., joined, post, p. 598.

Donald J. Zoeller, for petitioners.

Charles F. Rule, Washington, D.C., for U.S., as amicus curiae, by special leave of Court, in support of petitioners.

Edwin P. Rome, Philadelphia, Pa., for respondents.

Justice POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires that we again consider the standard district courts must apply when deciding whether to grant summary judgment in an antitrust conspiracy case.

* Stating the facts of this case is a daunting task. The opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit runs to 69 pages; the primary opinion of the District Court is more than three times as long. In re Japanese Electronic Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238 (CA3 1983); 513 F.Supp. 1100 (ED Pa.1981). Two respected District Judges each have authored a number of opinions in this case; the published ones alone would fill an entire volume of the Federal Supplement. In addition, the parties have filed a 40-volume appendix in this Court that is said to contain the essence of the evidence on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals based their respective decisions.

We will not repeat what these many opinions have stated and restated, or summarize the mass of documents that constitute the record on appeal. Since we review only the standard applied by the Court of Appeals in deciding this case, and not the weight assigned to particular pieces of evidence, we find it unnecessary to state the facts in great detail. What follows is a summary of this case’s long history.

Petitioners, defendants below, are 21 corporations that manufacture or sell “consumer electronic products” (CEPs)—for the most part, television sets. Petitioners include both Japanese manufacturers of CEPs and American firms, controlled by Japanese parents, that sell the Japanese-manufactured products. Respondents, plaintiffs below, are Zenith Radio Corporation (Zenith) and National Union Electric Corporation (NUE). Zenith is an American firm that manufactures and sells television sets. NUE is the corporate successor to Emerson Radio Company, an American firm that manufactured and sold television sets until 1970, when it withdrew from the market after sustaining substantial losses. Zenith and NUE began this lawsuit in 1974, claiming that petitioners had illegally conspired to drive American firms from the American CEP market. According to respondents, the gist of this conspiracy was a ” ‘scheme to raise, fix and maintain artificially high prices for television receivers sold by [petitioners] in Japan and, at the same time, to fix and maintain low prices for television receivers exported to and sold in the United States.’ ” 723 F.2d, at 251 (quoting respondents’ preliminary pretrial memorandum). These “low prices” were allegedly at levels that produced substantial losses for petitioners. 513 F.Supp., at 1125. The conspiracy allegedly began as early as 1953, and according to respondents was in full operation by sometime in the late 1960’s. Respondents claimed that various portions of this scheme violated §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, § 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act, § 73 of the Wilson Tariff Act, and the Antidumping Act of 1916.

After several years of detailed discovery, petitioners filed motions for summary judgment on all claims against them. The District Court directed the parties to file, with preclusive effect, “Final Pretrial Statements” listing all the documentary evidence that would be offered if the case proceeded to trial. Respondents filed such a statement, and petitioners responded with a series of motions challenging the admissibility of respondents’ evidence. In three detailed opinions, the District Court found the bulk of the evidence on which Zenith and NUE relied inadmissible.

The District Court then turned to petitioners’ motions for summary judgment. In an opinion spanning 217 pages, the court found that the admissible evidence did not raise a genuine issue of material fact as to the existence of the alleged conspiracy. At bottom, the court found, respondents’ claims rested on the inferences that could be drawn from petitioners’ parallel conduct in the Japanese and American markets, and from the effects of that conduct on petitioners’ American competitors. 513 F.Supp., at 1125-1127. After reviewing the evidence both by category and in toto, the court found that any inference of conspiracy was unreasonable, because (i) some portions of the evidence suggested that petitioners conspired in ways that did not injure respondents, and (ii) the evidence that bore directly on the alleged price-cutting conspiracy did not rebut the more plausible inference that petitioners were cutting prices to compete in the American market and not to monopolize it. Summary judgment therefore was granted on respondents’ claims under § 1 of the Sherman Act and the Wilson Tariff Act. Because the Sherman Act § 2 claims, which alleged that petitioners had combined to monopolize the American CEP market, were functionally indistinguishable from the § 1 claims, the court dismissed them also. Finally, the court found that the Robinson-Patman Act claims depended on the same supposed conspiracy as the Sherman Act claims. Since the court had found no genuine issue of fact as to the conspiracy, it entered judgment in petitioners’ favor on those claims as well.

The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed. The court began by examining the District Court’s evidentiary rulings, and determined that much of the evidence excluded by the District Court was in fact admissible. 723 F.2d, at 260-303. These evidentiary rulings are not before us. See 471 U.S. 1002, 105 S.Ct. 1863, 85 L.Ed.2d 157 (1985) (limiting grant of certiorari).

On the merits, and based on the newly enlarged record, the court found that the District Court’s summary judgment decision was improper. The court acknowledged that “there are legal limitations upon the inferences which may be drawn from circumstantial evidence,” 723 F.2d, at 304, but it found that “the legal problem . . . is different” when “there is direct evidence of concert of action.” Ibid. Here, the court concluded, “there is both direct evidence of certain kinds of concert of action and circumstantial evidence having some tendency to suggest that other kinds of concert of action may have occurred.” Id., at 304-305. Thus, the court reasoned, cases concerning the limitations on inferring conspiracy from ambiguous evidence were not dispositive. Id., at 305. Turning to the evidence, the court determined that a factfinder reasonably could draw the following conclusions:

1. The Japanese market for CEPs was characterized by oligopolistic behavior, with a small number of producers meeting regularly and exchanging information on price and other matters. Id., at 307. This created the opportunity for a stable combination to raise both prices and profits in Japan. American firms could not attack such a combination because the Japanese Government imposed significant barriers to entry. Ibid.

2. Petitioners had relatively higher fixed costs than their American counterparts, and therefore needed to operate at something approaching full capacity in order to make a profit. Ibid.

3. Petitioners’ plant capacity exceeded the needs of the Japanese market. Ibid.

4. By formal agreements arranged in cooperation with Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), petitioners fixed minimum prices for CEPs exported to the American market. Id., at 310. The parties refer to these prices as the “check prices,” and to the agreements that require them as the “check price agreements.”

5. Petitioners agreed to distribute their products in the United States according to a “five company rule”: each Japanese producer was permitted to sell only to five American distributors. Ibid.

6. Petitioners undercut their own check prices by a variety of rebate schemes. Id., at 311. Petitioners sought to conceal these rebate schemes both from the United States Customs Service and from MITI, the former to avoid various customs regulations as well as action under the antidumping laws, and the latter to cover up petitioners’ violations of the check-price agreements.

Based on inferences from the foregoing conclusions, the Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market. The court apparently did not consider whether it was as plausible to conclude that petitioners’ price-cutting behavior was independent and not conspiratorial.

The court found it unnecessary to address petitioners’ claim that they could not be held liable under the antitrust laws for conduct that was compelled by a foreign sovereign. The claim, in essence, was that because MITI required petitioners to enter into the check-price agreements, liability could not be premised on those agreements. The court concluded that this case did not present any issue of sovereign compulsion, because the check-price agreements were being used as “evidence of a low export price conspiracy” and not as an independent basis for finding antitrust liability. The court also believed it was unclear that the check prices in fact were mandated by the Japanese Government, notwithstanding a statement to that effect by MITI itself. Id., at 315.

We granted certiorari to determine (i) whether the Court of Appeals applied the proper standards in evaluating the District Court’s decision to grant petitioners’ motion for summary judgment, and (ii) whether petitioners could be held liable under the antitrust laws for a conspiracy in part compelled by a foreign sovereign. 471 U.S. 1002, 105 S.Ct. 1863, 85 L.Ed.2d 157 (1985). We reverse on the first issue, but do not reach the second.

We begin by emphasizing what respondents’ claim is not. Respondents cannot recover antitrust damages based solely on an alleged cartelization of the Japanese market, because American antitrust laws do not regulate the competitive conditions of other nations’ economies. United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 F.2d 416, 443 (CA2 1945) (L. Hand, J.); 1 P. Areeda & D. Turner, Antitrust Law ¶ 236d (1978). Nor can respondents recover damages for any conspiracy by petitioners to charge higher than competitive prices in the American market. Such conduct would indeed violate the Sherman Act, United States v. Trenton Potteries Co., 273 U.S. 392, 47 S.Ct. 377, 71 L.Ed. 700 (1927); United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150, 223, 60 S.Ct. 811, 844, 84 L.Ed. 1129 (1940), but it could not injure respondents: as petitioners’ competitors, respondents stand to gain from any conspiracy to raise the market price in CEPs. Cf. Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 488-489, 97 S.Ct. 690, 697, 50 L.Ed.2d 701 (1977). Finally, for the same reason, respondents cannot recover for a conspiracy to impose nonprice restraints that have the effect of either raising market price or limiting output. Such restrictions, though harmful to competition, actually benefit competitors by making supracompetitive pricing more attractive. Thus, neither petitioners’ alleged supracompetitive pricing in Japan, nor the five-company rule that limited distribution in this country, nor the check prices insofar as they established minimum prices in this country, can by themselves give respondents a cognizable claim against petitioners for antitrust damages. The Court of Appeals therefore erred to the extent that it found evidence of these alleged conspiracies to be “direct evidence” of a conspiracy that injured respondents. See 723 F.2d, at 304-305.

Respondents nevertheless argue that these supposed conspiracies, if not themselves grounds for recovery of antitrust damages, are circumstantial evidence of another conspiracy that is cognizable: a conspiracy to monopolize the American market by means of pricing below the market level. The thrust of respondents’ argument is that petitioners used their monopoly profits from the Japanese market to fund a concerted campaign to price predatorily and thereby drive respondents and other American manufacturers of CEPs out of business. Once successful, according to respondents, petitioners would cartelize the American CEP market, restricting output and raising prices above the level that fair competition would produce. The resulting monopoly profits, respondents contend, would more than compensate petitioners for the losses they incurred through years of pricing below market level.

The Court of Appeals found that respondents’ allegation of a horizontal conspiracy to engage in predatory pricing, if proved, would be a per se violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. 723 F.2d, at 306. Petitioners did not appeal from that conclusion. The issue in this case thus becomes whether respondents adduced sufficient evidence in support of their theory to survive summary judgment. We therefore examine the principles that govern the summary judgment determination.

III

To survive petitioners’ motion for summary judgment, respondents must establish that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether petitioners entered into an illegal conspiracy that caused respondents to suffer a cognizable injury. Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e); First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U.S. 253, 288-289, 88 S.Ct. 1575, 1592, 20 L.Ed.2d 569 (1968). This showing has two components. First, respondents must show more than a conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws; they must show an injury to them resulting from the illegal conduct. Respondents charge petitioners with a whole host of conspiracies in restraint of trade. Supra, at 582-583. Except for the alleged conspiracy to monopolize the American market through predatory pricing, these alleged conspiracies could not have caused respondents to suffer an “antitrust injury,” Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S., at 489, 97 S.Ct., at 697, because they actually tended to benefit respondents. Supra, at 582-583. Therefore, unless, in context, evidence of these “other” conspiracies raises a genuine issue concerning the existence of a predatory pricing conspiracy, that evidence cannot defeat petitioners’ summary judgment motion.

It follows from these settled principles that if the factual context renders respondents’ claim implausible—if the claim is one that simply makes no economic sense—respondents must come forward with more persuasive evidence to support their claim than would otherwise be necessary. Cities Service is instructive. The issue in that case was whether proof of the defendant’s refusal to deal with the plaintiff supported an inference that the defendant willingly had joined an illegal boycott. Economic factors strongly suggested that the defendant had no motive to join the alleged conspiracy. 391 U.S., at 278-279, 88 S.Ct., at 1587. The Court acknowledged that, in isolation, the defendant’s refusal to deal might well have sufficed to create a triable issue. Id., at 277, 88 S.Ct., at 1586. But the refusal to deal had to be evaluated in its factual context. Since the defendant lacked any rational motive to join the alleged boycott, and since its refusal to deal was consistent with the defendant’s independent interest, the refusal to deal could not by itself support a finding of antitrust liability. Id., at 280, 88 S.Ct., at 1588.

Respondents correctly note that “[o]n summary judgment the inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts . . . must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion.” United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 994, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962). But antitrust law limits the range of permissible inferences from ambiguous evidence in a § 1 case. Thus, in Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752, 104 S.Ct. 1464, 79 L.Ed.2d 775 (1984), we held that conduct as consistent with permissible competition as with illegal conspiracy does not, standing alone, support an inference of antitrust conspiracy. Id., at 764, 104 S.Ct., at 1470. See also Cities Service, supra, 391 U.S., at 280, 88 S.Ct., at 1588. To survive a motion for summary judgment or for a directed verdict, a plaintiff seeking damages for a violation of § 1 must present evidence “that tends to exclude the possibility” that the alleged conspirators acted independently. 465 U.S., at 764, 104 S.Ct., at 1471. Respondents in this case, in other words, must show that the inference of conspiracy is reasonable in light of the competing inferences of independent action or collusive action that could not have harmed respondents. See Cities Service, supra, 391 U.S., at 280, 88 S.Ct., at 1588.

Petitioners argue that these principles apply fully to this case. According to petitioners, the alleged conspiracy is one that is economically irrational and practically infeasible. Consequently, petitioners contend, they had no motive to engage in the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy; indeed, they had a strong motive not to conspire in the manner respondents allege. Petitioners argue that, in light of the absence of any apparent motive and the ambiguous nature of the evidence of conspiracy, no trier of fact reasonably could find that the conspiracy with which petitioners are charged actually existed. This argument requires us to consider the nature of the alleged conspiracy and the practical obstacles to its implementation.

A predatory pricing conspiracy is by nature speculative. Any agreement to price below the competitive level requires the conspirators to forgo profits that free competition would offer them. The forgone profits may be considered an investment in the future. For the investment to be rational, the conspirators must have a reasonable expectation of recovering, in the form of later monopoly profits, more than the losses suffered. As then-Professor Bork, discussing predatory pricing by a single firm, explained:

“Any realistic theory of predation recognizes that the predator as well as his victims will incur losses during the fighting, but such a theory supposes it may be a rational calculation for the predator to view the losses as an investment in future monopoly profits (where rivals are to be killed) or in future undisturbed profits (where rivals are to be disciplined). The future flow of profits, appropriately discounted, must then exceed the present size of the losses.” R. Bork, The Antitrust Paradox 145 (1978).

See also McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J.Law & Econ. 289, 295-297 (1980). As this explanation shows, the success of such schemes is inherently uncertain: the short-run loss is definite, but the long-run gain depends on successfully neutralizing the competition. Moreover, it is not enough simply to achieve monopoly power, as monopoly pricing may breed quick entry by new competitors eager to share in the excess profits. The success of any predatory scheme depends on maintaining monopoly power for long enough both to recoup the predator’s losses and to harvest some additional gain. Absent some assurance that the hoped-for monopoly will materialize, and that it can be sustained for a significant period of time, “[t]he predator must make a substantial investment with no assurance that it will pay off.” Easterbrook, Predatory Strategies and Counterstrategies, 48 U.Chi.L.Rev. 263, 268 (1981). For this reason, there is a consensus among commentators that predatory pricing schemes are rarely tried, and even more rarely successful. See, e.g., Bork, supra, at 149-155; Areeda & Turner, Predatory Pricing and Related Practices Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 697, 699 (1975); Easterbrook, supra; Koller, The Myth of Predatory Pricing—An Empirical Study, 4 Antitrust Law & Econ.Rev. 105 (1971); McGee, Predatory Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N.J.) Case, 1 J.Law & Econ. 137 (1958); McGee, Predatory Pricing Revisited, 23 J.Law & Econ., at 292-294. See also Northeastern Telephone Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 651 F.2d 76, 88 (CA2 1981) (“[N]owhere in the recent outpouring of literature on the subject do commentators suggest that [predatory] pricing is either common or likely to increase”), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943, 102 S.Ct. 1438, 71 L.Ed.2d 654 (1982).

These observations apply even to predatory pricing by a single firm seeking monopoly power. In this case, respondents allege that a large number of firms have conspired over a period of many years to charge below-market prices in order to stifle competition. Such a conspiracy is incalculably more difficult to execute than an analogous plan undertaken by a single predator. The conspirators must allocate the losses to be sustained during the conspiracy’s operation, and must also allocate any gains to be realized from its success. Precisely because success is speculative and depends on a willingness to endure losses for an indefinite period, each conspirator has a strong incentive to cheat, letting its partners suffer the losses necessary to destroy the competition while sharing in any gains if the conspiracy succeeds. The necessary allocation is therefore difficult to accomplish. Yet if conspirators cheat to any substantial extent, the conspiracy must fail, because its success depends on depressing the market price for all buyers of CEPs. If there are too few goods at the artificially low price to satisfy demand, the would-be victims of the conspiracy can continue to sell at the “real” market price, and the conspirators suffer losses to little purpose.

Finally, if predatory pricing conspiracies are generally unlikely to occur, they are especially so where, as here, the prospects of attaining monopoly power seem slight. In order to recoup their losses, petitioners must obtain enough market power to set higher than competitive prices, and then must sustain those prices long enough to earn in excess profits what they earlier gave up in below-cost prices. See Northeastern Telephone Co. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., supra, at 89; Areeda & Turner, 88 Harv.L.Rev., at 698. Two decades after their conspiracy is alleged to have commenced, petitioners appear to be far from achieving this goal: the two largest shares of the retail market in television sets are held by RCA and respondent Zenith, not by any of petitioners. 6 App. to Brief for Appellant in No. 81-2331 (CA3), pp. 2575a-2576a. Moreover, those shares, which together approximate 40% of sales, did not decline appreciably during the 1970’s. Ibid. Petitioners’ collective share rose rapidly during this period, from one-fifth or less of the relevant markets to close to 50%. 723 F.2d, at 316. Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals found, however, that petitioners’ share presently allows them to charge monopoly prices; to the contrary, respondents contend that the conspiracy is ongoing—that petitioners are still artificially depressing the market price in order to drive Zenith out of the market. The data in the record strongly suggest that that goal is yet far distant.

The alleged conspiracy’s failure to achieve its ends in the two decades of its asserted operation is strong evidence that the conspiracy does not in fact exist. Since the losses in such a conspiracy accrue before the gains, they must be “repaid” with interest. And because the alleged losses have accrued over the course of two decades, the conspirators could well require a correspondingly long time to recoup. Maintaining supracompetitive prices in turn depends on the continued cooperation of the conspirators, on the inability of other would-be competitors to enter the market, and (not incidentally) on the conspirators’ ability to escape antitrust liability for their minimum price-fixing cartel. Each of these factors weighs more heavily as the time needed to recoup losses grows. If the losses have been substantial—as would likely be necessary in order to drive out the competition —petitioners would most likely have to sustain their cartel for years simply to break even.

Nor does the possibility that petitioners have obtained supracompetitive profits in the Japanese market change this calculation. Whether or not petitioners have the means to sustain substantial losses in this country over a long period of time, they have no motive to sustain such losses absent some strong likelihood that the alleged conspiracy in this country will eventually pay off. The courts below found no evidence of any such success, and—as indicated above—the facts actually are to the contrary: RCA and Zenith, not any of the petitioners, continue to hold the largest share of the American retail market in color television sets. More important, there is nothing to suggest any relationship between petitioners’ profits in Japan and the amount petitioners could expect to gain from a conspiracy to monopolize the American market. In the absence of any such evidence, the possible existence of supracompetitive profits in Japan simply cannot overcome the economic obstacles to the ultimate success of this alleged predatory conspiracy.

In Monsanto, we emphasized that courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible, because the effect of such practices is often to deter procompetitive conduct. Monsanto, 465 U.S., at 762-764, 104 S.Ct., at 1470. Respondents, petitioners’ competitors, seek to hold petitioners liable for damages caused by the alleged conspiracy to cut prices. Moreover, they seek to establish this conspiracy indirectly, through evidence of other combinations (such as the check-price agreements and the five company rule) whose natural tendency is to raise prices, and through evidence of rebates and other price-cutting activities that respondents argue tend to prove a combination to suppress prices. But cutting prices in order to increase business often is the very essence of competition. Thus, mistaken inferences in cases such as this one are especially costly, because they chill the very conduct the antitrust laws are designed to protect. See Monsanto, supra, at 763-764, 104 S.Ct., at 1470. “[W]e must be concerned lest a rule or precedent that authorizes a search for a particular type of undesirable pricing behavior end up by discouraging legitimate price competition.” Barry Wright Corp. v. ITT Grinnell Corp., 724 F.2d 227, 234 (CA1 1983).

In most cases, this concern must be balanced against the desire that illegal conspiracies be identified and punished. That balance is, however, unusually one-sided in cases such as this one. As we earlier explained, supra, at 588-593, predatory pricing schemes require conspirators to suffer losses in order eventually to realize their illegal gains; moreover, the gains depend on a host of uncertainties, making such schemes more likely to fail than to succeed. These economic realities tend to make predatory pricing conspiracies self-deterring: unlike most other conduct that violates the antitrust laws, failed predatory pricing schemes are costly to the conspirators. See Easterbrook, The Limits of Antitrust, 63 Texas L.Rev. 1, 26 (1984). Finally, unlike predatory pricing by a single firm, successful predatory pricing conspiracies involving a large number of firms can be identified and punished once they succeed, since some form of minimum price-fixing agreement would be necessary in order to reap the benefits of predation. Thus, there is little reason to be concerned that by granting summary judgment in cases where the evidence of conspiracy is speculative or ambiguous, courts will encourage such conspiracies.

As our discussion in Part IV-A shows, petitioners had no motive to enter into the alleged conspiracy. To the contrary, as presumably rational businesses, petitioners had every incentive not to engage in the conduct with which they are charged, for its likely effect would be to generate losses for petitioners with no corresponding gains. Cf. Cities Service, 391 U.S., at 279, 88 S.Ct., at 1587. The Court of Appeals did not take account of the absence of a plausible motive to enter into the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy. It focused instead on whether there was “direct evidence of concert of action.” 723 F.2d, at 304. The Court of Appeals erred in two respects: (i) the “direct evidence” on which the court relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy; and (ii) the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing.

The “direct evidence” on which the court relied was evidence of other combinations, not of a predatory pricing conspiracy. Evidence that petitioners conspired to raise prices in Japan provides little, if any, support for respondents’ claims: a conspiracy to increase profits in one market does not tend to show a conspiracy to sustain losses in another. Evidence that petitioners agreed to fix minimum prices (through the check-price agreements) for the American market actually works in petitioners’ favor, because it suggests that petitioners were seeking to place a floor under prices rather than to lower them. The same is true of evidence that petitioners agreed to limit the number of distributors of their products in the American market the so-called five company rule. That practice may have facilitated a horizontal territorial allocation, see United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U.S. 596, 92 S.Ct. 1126, 31 L.Ed.2d 515 (1972), but its natural effect would be to raise market prices rather than reduce them. Evidence that tends to support any of these collateral conspiracies thus says little, if anything, about the existence of a conspiracy to charge below-market prices in the American market over a period of two decades.

That being the case, the absence of any plausible motive to engage in the conduct charged is highly relevant to whether a “genuine issue for trial” exists within the meaning of Rule 56(e). Lack of motive bears on the range of permissible conclusions that might be drawn from ambiguous evidence: if petitioners had no rational economic motive to conspire, and if their conduct is consistent with other, equally plausible explanations, the conduct does not give rise to an inference of conspiracy. See Cities Service, supra, 391 U.S., at 278-280, 88 S.Ct., at 1587-1588. Here, the conduct in question consists largely of (i) pricing at levels that succeeded in taking business away from respondents, and (ii) arrangements that may have limited petitioners’ ability to compete with each other (and thus kept prices from going even lower). This conduct suggests either that petitioners behaved competitively, or that petitioners conspired to raise prices. Neither possibility is consistent with an agreement among 21 companies to price below-market levels. Moreover, the predatory pricing scheme that this conduct is said to prove is one that makes no practical sense: it calls for petitioners to destroy companies larger and better established than themselves, a goal that remains far distant more than two decades after the conspiracy’s birth. Even had they succeeded in obtaining their monopoly, there is nothing in the record to suggest that they could recover the losses they would need to sustain along the way. In sum, in light of the absence of any rational motive to conspire, neither petitioners’ pricing practices, nor their conduct in the Japanese market, nor their agreements respecting prices and distribution in the American market, suffice to create a “genuine issue for trial.” Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 56(e).

On remand, the Court of Appeals is free to consider whether there is other evidence that is sufficiently unambiguous to permit a trier of fact to find that petitioners conspired to price predatorily for two decades despite the absence of any apparent motive to do so. The evidence must “ten[d] to exclude the possibility” that petitioners underpriced respondents to compete for business rather than to implement an economically senseless conspiracy. Monsanto, 465 U.S., at 764, 104 S.Ct., at 1471. In the absence of such evidence, there is no “genuine issue for trial” under Rule 56(e), and petitioners are entitled to have summary judgment reinstated.

Our decision makes it unnecessary to reach the sovereign compulsion issue. The heart of petitioners’ argument on that issue is that MITI, an agency of the Government of Japan, required petitioners to fix minimum prices for export to the United States, and that petitioners are therefore immune from antitrust liability for any scheme of which those minimum prices were an integral part. As we discussed in Part II, supra, respondents could not have suffered a cognizable injury from any action that raised prices in the American CEP market. If liable at all, petitioners are liable for conduct that is distinct from the check-price agreements. The sovereign compulsion question that both petitioners and the Solicitor General urge us to decide thus is not presented here.

The decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice WHITE, with whom Justice BRENNAN, Justice BLACKMUN, and Justice STEVENS join, dissenting.

It is indeed remarkable that the Court, in the face of the long and careful opinion of the Court of Appeals, reaches the result it does. The Court of Appeals faithfully followed the relevant precedents, including First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U.S. 253, 88 S.Ct. 1575, 20 L.Ed.2d 569 (1968), and Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U.S. 752, 104 S.Ct. 1464, 79 L.Ed.2d 775 (1984), and it kept firmly in mind the principle that proof of a conspiracy should not be fragmented, see Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U.S. 690, 699, 82 S.Ct. 1404, 1410, 8 L.Ed.2d 777 (1962). After surveying the massive record, including very significant evidence that the District Court erroneously had excluded, the Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence taken as a whole creates a genuine issue of fact whether petitioners engaged in a conspiracy in violation of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and § 2(a) of the Robinson-Patman Act. In my view, the Court of Appeals’ opinion more than adequately supports this judgment.

The Court’s opinion today, far from identifying reversible error, only muddies the waters. In the first place, the Court makes confusing and inconsistent statements about the appropriate standard for granting summary judgment. Second, the Court makes a number of assumptions that invade the factfinder’s province. Third, the Court faults the Third Circuit for nonexistent errors and remands the case although it is plain that respondents’ evidence raises genuine issues of material fact.

* The Court’s initial discussion of summary judgment standards appears consistent with settled doctrine. I agree that “[w]here the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no ‘genuine issue for trial.’ ” Ante, at 587 (quoting Cities Service, supra, 391 U.S., at 289, 88 S.Ct., at 1592). I also agree that ” ‘[o]n summary judgment the inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts . . . must be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion.’ ” Ante, at 587 (quoting United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 994, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962)). But other language in the Court’s opinion suggests a departure from traditional summary judgment doctrine. Thus, the Court gives the following critique of the Third Circuit’s opinion:

“[T]he Court of Appeals concluded that a reasonable factfinder could find a conspiracy to depress prices in the American market in order to drive out American competitors, which conspiracy was funded by excess profits obtained in the Japanese market. The court apparently did not consider whether it was as plausible to conclude that petitioners’ price-cutting behavior was independent and not conspiratorial.” Ante, at 581.

In a similar vein, the Court summarizes Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., supra, as holding that “courts should not permit factfinders to infer conspiracies when such inferences are implausible. . . .” Ante, at 593. Such language suggests that a judge hearing a defendant’s motion for summary judgment in an antitrust case should go beyond the traditional summary judgment inquiry and decide for himself whether the weight of the evidence favors the plaintiff. Cities Service and Monsanto do not stand for any such proposition. Each of those cases simply held that a particular piece of evidence standing alone was insufficiently probative to justify sending a case to the jury. These holdings in no way undermine the doctrine that all evidence must be construed in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment.

If the Court intends to give every judge hearing a motion for summary judgment in an antitrust case the job of determining if the evidence makes the inference of conspiracy more probable than not, it is overturning settled law. If the Court does not intend such a pronouncement, it should refrain from using unnecessarily broad and confusing language.

In defining what respondents must show in order to recover, the Court makes assumptions that invade the factfinder’s province. The Court states with very little discussion that respondents can recover under § 1 of the Sherman Act only if they prove that “petitioners conspired to drive respondents out of the relevant markets by (i) pricing below the level necessary to sell their products, or (ii) pricing below some appropriate measure of cost.” Ante, at 585, n. 8. This statement is premised on the assumption that “[a]n agreement without these features would either leave respondents in the same position as would market forces or would actually benefit respondents by raising market prices.” Ibid. In making this assumption, the Court ignores the contrary conclusions of respondents’ expert DePodwin, whose report in very relevant part was erroneously excluded by the District Court.

The DePodwin Report, on which the Court of Appeals relied along with other material, indicates that respondents were harmed in two ways that are independent of whether petitioners priced their products below “the level necessary to sell their products or . . . some appropriate measure of cost.” Ibid. First, the Report explains that the price-raising scheme in Japan resulted in lower consumption of petitioners’ goods in that country and the exporting of more of petitioners’ goods to this country than would have occurred had prices in Japan been at the competitive level. Increasing exports to this country resulted in depressed prices here, which harmed respondents. Second, the DePodwin Report indicates that petitioners exchanged confidential proprietary information and entered into agreements such as the five company rule with the goal of avoiding intragroup competition in the United States market. The Report explains that petitioners’ restrictions on intragroup competition caused respondents to lose business that they would not have lost had petitioners competed with one another.

The DePodwin Report alone creates a genuine factual issue regarding the harm to respondents caused by Japanese cartelization and by agreements restricting competition among petitioners in this country. No doubt the Court prefers its own economic theorizing to Dr. DePodwin’s, but that is not a reason to deny the factfinder an opportunity to consider Dr. DePodwin’s views on how petitioners’ alleged collusion harmed respondents.

The Court, in discussing the unlikelihood of a predatory conspiracy, also consistently assumes that petitioners valued profit-maximization over growth. See, e.g., ante, at 595. In light of the evidence that petitioners sold their goods in this country at substantial losses over a long period of time, see Part III-B, infra, I believe that this is an assumption that should be argued to the factfinder, not decided by the Court.

III

In reversing the Third Circuit’s judgment, the Court identifies two alleged errors: “(i) [T]he ‘direct evidence’ on which the [Court of Appeals] relied had little, if any, relevance to the alleged predatory pricing conspiracy; and (ii) the court failed to consider the absence of a plausible motive to engage in predatory pricing.” Ante, at 595. The Court’s position is without substance.

The first claim of error is that the Third Circuit treated evidence regarding price fixing in Japan and the so-called five company rule and check prices as ” ‘direct evidence’ of a conspiracy that injured respondents.” Ante, at 583 (citing In re Japanese Electronics Products Antitrust Litigation, 723 F.2d 238, 304-305 (CA3 1983)). The passage from the Third Circuit’s opinion in which the Court locates this alleged error makes what I consider to be a quite simple and correct observation, namely, that this case is distinguishable from traditional “conscious parallelism” cases, in that there is direct evidence of concert of action among petitioners. Ibid. The Third Circuit did not, as the Court implies, jump unthinkingly from this observation to the conclusion that evidence regarding the five company rule could support a finding of antitrust injury to respondents. The Third Circuit twice specifically noted that horizontal agreements allocating customers, though illegal, do not ordinarily injure competitors of the agreeing parties. Id., at 306, 310-311. However, after reviewing evidence of cartel activity in Japan, collusive establishment of dumping prices in this country, and long-term, below-cost sales, the Third Circuit held that a factfinder could reasonably conclude that the five company rule was not a simple price-raising device:

“[A] factfinder might reasonably infer that the allocation of customers in the United States, combined with price-fixing in Japan, was intended to permit concentration of the effects of dumping upon American competitors while eliminating competition among the Japanese manufacturers in either market.” Id., at 311.

I see nothing erroneous in this reasoning.

The Court’s second charge of error is that the Third Circuit was not sufficiently skeptical of respondents’ allegation that petitioners engaged in predatory pricing conspiracy. But the Third Circuit is not required to engage in academic discussions about predation; it is required to decide whether respondents’ evidence creates a genuine issue of material fact. The Third Circuit did its job, and remanding the case so that it can do the same job again is simply pointless.

The Third Circuit indicated that it considers respondents’ evidence sufficient to create a genuine factual issue regarding long-term, below-cost sales by petitioners. Ibid. The Court tries to whittle away at this conclusion by suggesting that the “expert opinion evidence of below-cost pricing has little probative value in comparison with the economic factors . . . that suggest that such conduct is irrational.” Ante, at 594, n. 19. But the question is not whether the Court finds respondents’ experts persuasive, or prefers the District Court’s analysis; it is whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to respondents, a jury or other factfinder could reasonably conclude that petitioners engaged in long-term, below-cost sales. I agree with the Third Circuit that the answer to this question is “yes.”

It is misleading for the Court to state that the Court of Appeals “did not disturb the District Court’s analysis of the factors that substantially undermine the probative value of [evidence in the DePodwin Report respecting below-cost sales].” Ibid. The Third Circuit held that the exclusion of the portion of the DePodwin Report regarding below-cost pricing was erroneous because “the trial court ignored DePodwin’s uncontradicted affidavit that all data relied on in his report were of the type on which experts in his field would reasonably rely.” 723 F.2d, at 282. In short, the Third Circuit found DePodwin’s affidavit sufficient to create a genuine factual issue regarding the correctness of his conclusion that petitioners sold below cost over a long period of time. Having made this determination, the court saw no need—nor do I—to address the District Court’s analysis point by point. The District Court’s criticisms of DePodwin’s methods are arguments that a factfinder should consider.

Because I believe that the Third Circuit was correct in holding that respondents have demonstrated the existence of genuine issues of material fact, I would affirm the judgment below and remand this case for trial.