Statement on the FTC's Right-to-Repair Settlement with Deere & Company

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Bull Moose Project today applauded the Federal Trade Commission and its five state co-plaintiffs for securing a landmark settlement with Deere & Company that restores American farmers' right to repair their own equipment.

"For generations, the American farmer fixed his own tractor with his own hands. Deere took that away, not by building a better product, but by locking farmers out of the machines they already paid for," said Aiden Buzzetti, President of the Bull Moose Project. "This settlement puts the wrench back in the farmer's hand. It is exactly what conservative antitrust enforcement should look like: the federal government breaking a chokehold that a dominant corporation placed on the people who feed this country."

Under the stipulated order, Deere must provide farmers and independent repair providers the same repair resources it gives its authorized dealers — on fair and reasonable terms — and is barred from discriminating or retaliating against those who repair equipment themselves rather than pay a dealer. Unlike the toothless voluntary agreements of years past, the order carries strict reporting and oversight requirements for its full 10-year term. The FTC got the enforcement architecture right.

The Bull Moose Project will be watching to ensure "fair and reasonable terms" doesn't become a loophole for prohibitive pricing. And Congress still has work to do: no settlement can fix the DMCA's restrictions on independent repair tools, and no farmer should have to wait for the FTC to sue one manufacturer at a time to enjoy a right that ought to be universal.

Theodore Roosevelt understood that concentrated economic power, left unchecked, robs ordinary Americans of their independence. Today's settlement is a Square Deal for the American farmer. We urge the Commission to keep going.