Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced an antitrust bill that would ban Amazon and Google from running an online marketplace and selling goods on that marketplace at the same time.
“Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon have been coddled by Washington politicians for years. This treatment has allowed them to amass colossal amounts of power that they use to censor political opinions that they don’t agree with and shut out competitors who offer consumers an alternative to the status quo,” Hawley said in a statement to news outlets. “It’s past time to bust up Big Tech companies, restore competition, and give power back the American consumers.”
The so-called Bust Up Big Tech Act bars firms such as Amazon from selling Amazon-branded products on Amazon’s market, where competitors also do business.
In a separate tweet, Hawley said the practice allows Amazon to destroy its competitors.
“No one company should be able to control e-commerce AND privilege its own products on the same platform AND control the cloud,” he wrote. “[Amazon] should be broken up.”
The Missouri Republican’s tweet referenced a Wall Street Journal article saying the Seattle-based firm “strong arms partners using its power across multiple businesses.”
According to a statement from his office, the Bust Up Big Tech Act would also bar Amazon from simultaneously owning a large amount of cloud computing services that other companies use while running its retail business.
Amazon runs Amazon Web Services (AWS), which courted controversy earlier this year after deplatforming “free speech” social media website Parler while still hosting Parler competitor Twitter on AWS.
Parler has since filed and dropped a lawsuit, then filed a new lawsuit against Amazon. The latest lawsuit, filed in a Washington court in early March, accused Amazon of anticompetitive behavior and a breach of contract.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
