Antitrust hawks take on Big Tech as pandemic persists
Lawmakers want a merger moratorium and Amazon's Jeff
Bezos to come testify
By Dean DeChiaro
Posted May 5, 2020 at 6:00am
"Long before COVID-19 changed everything, progressives in Washington had begun pushing for a new era of antitrust enforcement in which the government would take on the power amassed by the captains of today’s technology industry companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Now, Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York, and Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island are placing that crusade in the context of the ongoing pandemic.
New legislation announced by Warren and Ocasio-Cortez last week would direct the Federal Trade Commission to place a near-universal moratorium on mergers and acquisitions, including those in the tech industry, until the agency decides small businesses and their employees are no longer suffering financially.
In addition, another group of lawmakers, upset at an April 23 report in The Wall Street Journal that found that Amazon used data collected on its third-party sellers to manufacture competing products bearing the Amazon brand, has asked Jeff Bezos, the online retailer’s CEO, to come testify to Congress."
moar:
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/05/antitrust-hawks-take-on-big-tech-as-pandemic-persists/