Big Tech Mounting Big-Money Fight to Defeat to Corporate Antitrust Bill

Amazon and tech giants are mounting a big-money push to tank bipartisan antitrust legislation its proponents say rightly takes on concentrated corporate power undermining small businesses and democracy.

Introduced in October by lead co-sponsors Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.), the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S.2992) is coming up against negative media and spending blitzes ahead of a possible vote later this month.

Bloomberg reported Monday that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised a vote on the legislation this month, noting the narrow window ahead of the August recess.

The bill would, among other provisions, prevent major platforms like Amazon and Google from giving preferential treatment to their own products.

According to a report released last week by the Center for American Progress, the measure would “protect American consumers, small businesses, and innovation online.”

Industry lobby groups and major tech firms, however, are “going all out” against the bill, Axios reported Monday.

Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services, for example, “recently tried lobbying third-party sellers on an online forum that they use to communicate with one another about hot topics” to encourage them to oppose the measure, according to CNBC. “I want to ensure that you are aware of this legislation and what you can do to try and stop it from harming you,” he wrote in part, and directed sellers to a contact-your-senator form.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president Neil Bradley also came out swinging against the bill, writing in a Monday blog post that it would afford “unprecedented authority to bureaucrats at the FTC and DOJ allowing them to micro-manage the American economy and pick winners and losers in the marketplace.” And in a letter to senators last week, the chamber called it “misguided” and urged lawmakers to vote against it.

To help achieve that aim, as a Washington Post analysis published Monday highlighted, “tech trade associations and groups with ties to industry giants are… launching a major advertising blitz that’s increasingly targeting swing-state Democrats.”

Bloomberg also noted that “Apple, Amazon, Google, and [Facebook parent company] Meta spent $16.7 million lobbying in the first three months of 2022, with all four identifying the antitrust bills as their top priority, according to lobbying disclosures filed with Congress,” referencing the Senate and House versions. And Apple, Axios reported Monday, “spent more on lobbying last quarter ($2.5 million) than in any previous quarter.”

The legislation “passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with support from both parties earlier this year,” Politico reported last month. However, “in the days since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Klobuchar he would hold a floor vote as early as [June], several Democratic senators have privately expressed deep reservations about voting for the legislation, particularly with a midterm election looming, in their conversations with Schumer and other Democratic offices.”

Stacy Mitchell, co-director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, called Klobuchar’s bill “simple, bipartisan, wildly popular with voters, and a good first step toward reining in Big Tech.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Andrea Germanos.