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The experience of the war economy in the United States has reinforced the influence of arguments in favour of managed competition. Extending the claims of scientific management to the economy as a whole, this approach aimed at the coordination of firms through the exchange of information, which was seen as a necessity in terms of both economic efficiency and responses to cyclical fluctuations. Such a prospect led to a drastic reduction in the application of competition rules. However, the proposals that emerged during the 1929 crisis, which led to the reproduction in peacetime of the war economy experience at the risk of leading the American economy to cartelization under the umbrella of the federal state, were rejected by President Hoover, despite his defence in the 1920s of a model of regulated competition. Paradoxically, President Roosevelt resumed these projects within the framework of the First New Deal. This article deals with the arguments that were put forward to evade the competition rules and explains why the Democratic administration finally decided to return to a strict voluntary enforcement of the Sherman Act.JEL codes: L40, L51, N12