The new working group will “share information on potentially anti-competitive conduct affecting global and domestic supply chains.” It includes the U.S. Department of Justice, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the New Zealand Commerce Commission and the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority. (The Logic)

Talking point: Supply-chain disruptions are driving up businesses’ input and operating costs, expenses they’re passing on to customers, which is helping goose inflation. But the regulators said companies can’t use that as an excuse to collude, whether to fix prices, set wages or carve up markets between them. In April 2020, Canada’s Competition Bureau acknowledged that firms might need to work together more than usual in light of the pandemic, and said it wouldn’t closely scrutinize such collaboration as long as it was “short term” and in “good faith.” Thursday’s joint announcement resets expectations. In addition to sharing information with its international peers, the bureau has been “scanning the digital world” and “been able to stop some proposed cartels in their tracks,” commissioner Matthew Boswell told The Logic last year.