Leading liberal group pushes Democrats to break up Big Tech

An influential liberal advocacy group’s leader working with the Biden transition is pushing Democrats to smash Amazon, Facebook, and Google. 

The American Economic Liberties Project issued a new report urging the incoming Democratic administration to learn from what it perceives as the Obama administration’s antitrust enforcers’ failures. AELP executive director Sarah Miller is working with President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s transition team and has led the charge for Democrats to adopt liberal-minded antitrust action as a top priority. 

“Congress should break up Facebook, Google, and Amazon, reducing their scale and scope so they are no longer too big to regulate,” the AELP report stated. “One way to do this is through structural separations: for instance, by separating out Google’s general search from mapping, Android, and YouTube. Federal regulators should also pursue structural separations through antitrust litigation, including by continuing and expanding on [the Justice Department’s] Google case and the [Federal Trade Commission’s] Facebook case.”

The AELP report argued that the Obama administration’s antitrust enforcement looked similar to its predecessors’ in the Bush administration, and called for Mr. Biden to push for more liberal policies than former President Barack Obama. 

“Rebuilding a post-COVID economy that is structured to empower working people, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and communities will require President-elect Biden to build on this momentum and aggressively implement and expand on President Obama’s intentions, champion congressional action, and, critically, build political will for confronting monopoly power as a key component of building back better,” the AELP report stated. 

The appetite for antitrust enforcement in D.C. has grown on both sides of the political aisle, although for different reasons and have yielded different approaches from Republicans and Democrats. While Mr. Biden signaled support for undoing online legal liability protection during his campaign, less is known about his approach to antitrust issues involving tech policy.