Several anti-trust bills are working their way through committees with all of them having bipartisan support. The bills would force the breakup of Google, Facebook, and Apple.
Since these bills do have bipartisan support, they could make it out of the House and then sent it to the Senate, where they will have an uncertain fate.
The Democrats owe them for the 2020 election and want to keep their support in 2022 and 2024.
According to a press release from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the bills are designed to take on the anti-competitive companies to expand opportunities for workers, consumers, and small businesses.
As The Wall Street Journal reports:
Each of the bills has both Republicans and Democrats signed onto it, with more expected to join in the coming days, congressional aides said.
A total of seven Republicans are backing the bills, with a different group of three signings on to each measure, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Rep. Jayapal said:
“Not only is self-regulation by Big Tech patently ineffective, but it also comes at the direct expense of workers, consumers, small businesses, our local communities, and the free press. From Amazon and Facebook to Google and Apple, it is clear that these unregulated tech giants have become too big to care and too powerful to ever put people over profits.”
The five bills are as follows:
- The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would prohibit “discriminatory conduct by dominant platforms, including a ban on self-preferencing and picking winners and losers online.”
- The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act prohibits acquisitions of “competitive threats by dominant platforms, as well acquisitions that expand or entrench the market power of online platforms.”
- The Ending Platform Monopolies Act eliminates the ability of dominant platforms to “leverage their control over across multiple business lines to self-preference and disadvantage competitors in ways that undermine free and fair competition.”
- The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act promotes competition online by “lowering barriers to entry and switching costs for businesses and consumers through interoperability and data portability requirements.”
- The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act updates filing fees for “mergers for the first time in two decades to ensure that Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have the resources they need to aggressively enforce the antitrust laws.”
