According to a letter by Acting Assistant Attorney General Peter Hyun, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is throwing its support behind a senate antitrust bill. The bill would expand the federal government's regulatory reach over major tech firms such as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
"The Department views the rise of dominant platforms as presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency, global competitiveness, and our democracy." Says the letter, which was obtained earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal. "By controlling key arteries of the nation's commerce and communications, such platforms can exercise outsized market power in our modern economy. Vesting the power to pick winners and losers across markets in a small number of corporations contravenes the foundations of our capitalist system, and given the increasing importance of these markets, the power of such platforms is likely to continue to grow unless checked."
The DoJ noted that the bill would help curtail the practice of firms showing preference towards their own products, among other anticompetitive practices. If passed, the resulting package of laws would also help the DoJ and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) "challenge that conduct efficiently and effectively and better enable them to promote competition in digital markets." Currently, the department believes that major tech firms have "unchecked power" to influence the success or failure of other companies in the sector.
Despite skepticism by some members of Congress over the bill, support for stricter antitrust regulations, especially in the tech sector, is growing within the federal government.
In early 2020, the FTC launched a probe investigating the mergers and acquisitions of major tech firms. When the probe concluded last year, the commission found that stricter regulations were necessary, noting that tech's "big five" had made hundreds of unreported mergers throughout the 2010s.
While the bill seems to have stalled in Congress since I last reported on it, the House Judiciary Committee's passage of the Ending Platform Monopolies Act last year signaled similar antitrust sentiments in the House.