In the U.S., any law allowing manufacturers of brand-name or trademarked goods to fix the actual or minimum resale prices of these goods.
(Elsewhere the practice is called price maintenance.) Fair trade laws were passed by many states during the Great Depression in an effort to protect independent retailers from price-cutting by large chain stores and consequent loss of employment in distributive trades, but most were later repealed at the state level. Critics argued that such laws restricted competition; the complexity of post-World War II marketing channels also made enforcement impracticable. In 1975 the few that remained in existence were repealed by an act of Congress.