Antitrust in the United States has evolved over time as we learn from cases and research. Reforms should enhance competition to make our economy stronger and consumers better off. Unfortunately, a package of bills approved by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, along with companion bills introduced more recently by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D–MN) and Chuck Grassley (R–IA) and by Klobuchar and Tom Cotton (R–AR), would do exactly the opposite.
If these bills become law, consumers would almost certainly lose access to many popular and routinely used online services, while others would become less useful. For example, if you like being able to buy both independent retailer and Amazon products on Amazon’s platform, you might be out of luck. Amazon might have to choose between its third-party platform business and its Amazon-branded business. Either way, prices would be higher, choices fewer, and consumers would lose. So, likely, would many small companies that built their businesses on the Amazon platform.
Thomas Lenard is Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Technology Policy Institute. Lenard is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on telecommunications, electricity, antitrust, privacy, e-commerce and other regulatory issues. His publications include Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated?; The Digital Economy Fact Book; Privacy and the Commercial Use of Personal Information; Competition, Innovation and the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace; and Deregulating Electricity: The Federal Role.
Before joining the Technology Policy Institute, Lenard was acting president, senior vice president for research and senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He has served in senior economics positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Trade Commission and the Council on Wage and Price Stability, and was a member of the economics faculty at the University of California, Davis. He is a past president and chairman of the board of the National Economists Club.
Lenard is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He can be reached at [email protected]
