Does fair trade still exist

Samsung has been using what it calls a "Unilateral Pricing Policy" or UPP. They dictate what the price will be and all retailers follow suit. It can vary every few days depending on sales.

I thought it strange, at first, until I kept up with the ads and got a great deal on a 51" plasma TV. One day it was going for $1397 ($100 down from full retail) to $997. The price was only good for 4 days and then went up to $1497.

Christmas came early for me!

I guess it pays to pay attention to trending prices and be a more informative buyer.

All the best,
Nonoise

Let Google be your friend . . .

Whether we call it price fixing or something else, it still represents an attempt by the manufacturer to disrupt free market competition among its dealers. Many manufacturers dread having their products become commodities and try to keep retail prices artificially high to prevent it. The high end audio world is a Rolex and Champagne one,and preserving the image of ones product as a rare, unique, and expensive acquisition is essential to marketing to the high end customer.

The narrow answer to your question is that the so-called "fair trade laws" enacted at the state level in the 1930s were all repealed by federal law in 1975. See the topic "retail price maintenance" in Wikapedia. The fair trade laws were originally enacted not to protect manufacturers from discounters but to protect small, independent store owners from large chains (which came into existence in the 1930s) that could get lower prices from suppliers and undercut the independents on price.

Until 2007, retail price maintenance imposed privately by manufacturers (not by law) was automatically illegal. The rule was you couldn't control price after you sold the item to someone else. That approach was supplanted in a 2007 Supreme Court decision holding that each situation had to be evaluated on its facts to determine if there was an economically reasonable basis for the price maintenance. Retail price maintenance may be illegal in certain circumstances, but is not automatically so.