Cartel

A cartel is a group of producers that coordinates output, prices, or exports to influence a market in its members' collective favor, rather than competing independently.

A cartel forms when producers that would otherwise compete agree instead to manage the market together, usually by setting production limits so that supply stays below what a fully competitive market would produce, holding the price higher than it would otherwise be. The arrangement only works if members mostly honor their agreed limits and if outside producers cannot easily expand to fill the gap.

OPEC+ is the best-known commodity cartel, coordinating oil output across member countries through agreed quotas. Cartels are inherently unstable: each member has an incentive to produce a little more than its quota while the others hold back, and cheating has repeatedly weakened cartel agreements once discovered. Not every group of producers that talks to each other is a cartel; the term applies to coordinated limits on output or price, not ordinary industry associations.