The House Judiciary Committee passed a package of antitrust reforms targeting tech companies last week amid an air of contention between lawmakers. The House's decision is only the latest in major antitrust decisions by regulators abroad, reflecting a growing cascade of anti-tech sentiment among world leaders.
The "anti-tech cascade," as it were, has been building for years, rooted in fears that major tech firms such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) had begun to grow to monopolistic size. However, greater scrutiny was brought to tech companies starting in 2016 due to the influence of major tech firms on political discourse.
The bill package passed last week would appear to be a result of that cascading sentiment, at least in the United States. Already, regulators abroad have taken steps against tech firms, such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's April finding that Google and Apple's default apps were anticompetitive, or the Court of Justice of the European Union's recent ruling that widened GDPR enforcement against tech firms.
The package of six bills, the so-called "Ending Platform Monopolies Act," would set an ample precedent if passed even in part. The EPMA, as a whole, would strengthen federal regulatory agencies while making it more difficult for tech firms to consolidate competition through acquisitions and using their platforms to disadvantage competitors.
Despite the growing bipartisan antitrust sentiment, the EPMA's future is still far from certain. While the bill package would empower the federal government to take on tech giants, specific aspects of the package have caused internal debate within both Democratic and Republican circles. For example, Democrats from California voiced their concern that the bill would erode taxable income for the state and could put the state into a deficit. At the same time, some Republicans were critical that the legislation did not do enough to address "anti-conservative bias" in tech firms, a popular talking point perpetuated by former President Donald Trump. Other conservatives voiced concerns that the bill over-expanded federal authority.
Given that neither side of the aisle can seem to muster a comprehensive strategy at the moment, and the bill must still pass the House and Senate floors, it's hard to imagine the EPMA reaching the President Joe Biden's desk intact, much less at all. However, the greater concern for tech firms would appear to be the growing antitrust sentiment that would survive even if the bill should die in congress. Thus, the possibility of successor bills being proposed by members of both parties is very high, and the EMPA is likely just the beginning.