15 U.S.C. § 8
Section 8 · Trusts in restraint of import trade illegal; penalty
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 64 court decisions — leading case City of Lafayette Louisiana v. Louisiana Power & Light Company (1978)
Most recently applied in 507 F. App'x 716 - Darru Hsu v. Ubs Financial Services, Inc. (February 2013)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Every combination, conspiracy, trust, agreement, or contract is declared to be contrary to public policy, illegal, and void when the same is made by or between two or more persons or corporations, either of whom, as agent or principal, is engaged in importing any article from any foreign country into the United States, and when such combination, conspiracy, trust, agreement, or contract is intended to operate in restraint of lawful trade, or free competition in lawful trade or commerce, or to increase the market price in any part of the United States of any article or articles imported or intended to be imported into the United States, or of any manufacture into which such imported article enters or is intended to enter. Every person who shall be engaged in the importation of goods or any commodity from any foreign country in violation of this section, or who shall combine or conspire with another to violate the same, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States such person shall be fined in a sum not less than $100 and not exceeding $5,000, and shall be further punished by imprisonment, in the discretion of the court, for a term not less than three months nor exceeding twelve months.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1913—Act Feb. 12, 1913, inserted “as agent or principal”.
Short Title
Section 78 of act Aug. 27, 1894, as added by Pub. L. 94–435, title III, §305(d), Sept. 30, 1976, 90 Stat. 1397, provided that: “Sections 73, 74, 75, 76, and 77 of this Act [sections 8 to 11 of this title] may be cited as the ‘Wilson Tariff Act’.”
Cross References
Combinations in restraint of trade or commerce, see section 1 of this title.
Immunity of witnesses, see section 6001 of Title 18, Crimes and Criminal Procedure.
Monopolies in restraint of trade or commerce, see section 2 of this title.
Panama Canal closed to violators of antitrust laws, see section 31 of this title.