An overhaul of federal antitrust policy is gaining bipartisan momentum in Congress with plans that would make it easier for the government to break up Big Tech companies and increase spending on federal enforcement.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, said she sees monopolies in everything from “cat food to caskets.” The obvious starting point with her Republican counterparts, however, is Big Tech.
She is pushing two proposals with help from Republican colleagues. One would empower news organizations to negotiate over how their content is distributed by companies such as Facebook and Google. The other would place fees on corporate mergers to finance a beefed-up antitrust enforcement effort.
“Our current monopoly power problem didn’t just come out of nowhere during the last administration. It is the product of decisions by Republican and Democratic administrations over the last 40 years,” Ms. Klobuchar said Thursday at an antitrust subcommittee hearing.
“It took both parties to get us into this situation and it’s going to take both parties to get us out of this situation.”
President Biden has signaled that he supports an antitrust crackdown on the biggest technology companies.
He recently added leading liberal critics of Big Tech to his team. First, he hired Tim Wu, a Columbia University Law professor, to the White House National Economic Council to work on tech and antitrust issues. Mr. Biden plans to nominate Lina Khan, also from Columbia University Law School, to the Federal Trade Commission, according to reports.
As the tech companies gear up for the federal government’s legislative and regulatory push, they are simultaneously battling in the courts and around the world. Google, for example, is battling an antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department in federal court.
Apple, another dominant player targeted by federal lawmakers, is being investigated by Britain’s government over suspected anti-competitive behavior involving its App Store.
On Friday, Microsoft President Brad Smith is scheduled to be on the hot seat before a House antitrust panel.
Ms. Klobuchar teamed with Republican Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would give news publishers the ability to collectively negotiate with Big Tech companies.
The legislation is intended to level the playing field for small publishers and broadcasters by enabling them to work together to negotiate terms under which their content is distributed online.
Rep. David Cicilline, Rhode Island Democrat, introduced companion legislation on Wednesday in the House, where he leads the antitrust panel.
On another front, Ms. Klobuchar and Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, introduced the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act that would raise funds for federal antitrust enforcers by imposing fees on large companies rather than by raising taxes.
Ms. Klobuchar said the federal government is outmanned, noting that the Justice Department’s antitrust division has 123 fewer lawyers than it did 41 years ago and the Federal Trade Commission has 717 fewer lawyers than it did in 1980.
“Our agencies cannot fight the biggest companies the world has ever seen with duct tape and Band-aids,” she said.
Republicans are open to cracking down on Big Tech but worry Democrats’ have much broader goals.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the top Republican on the antitrust panel, warned that some Democrats want to leverage antitrust legislation as a vehicle to enact other parts of a liberal agenda.
“It’s worth remembering that some of my colleagues want to punish Big Tech not because it engages in too much censorship but because it doesn’t censor speech enough, speech with which they disagree, that is,” he said. “That isn’t a competition concern, it’s extortion.”
Mr. Lee said a “sweeping transformation” of antitrust laws is not needed now but he, too, wants to give federal agencies more resources to crack down on anticompetitive behavior.
Federal agencies, he said, need to muster the will to take anti-competitive companies head on.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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