This week, Senator Amy Klobuchar and the Judiciary Committee held a briefing to press for legislation that would fundamentally alter the purpose and powers of American antitrust law. The American Innovation and Choice Online and the Open App Markets Acts are just two of the antitrust bills circulating on Capitol Hill that would replace consumers with federal bureaucrats as the masterminds of business models and arbiters of economic success. This, in a country built on the entrepreneurial spirit of individuals, not the government.
Micro-management of businesses should not be handed over to politicians and government agencies – we’ve seen how this story plays out. Today’s attacks on ‘big tech’ harken back to twenty years ago, when a handful of big tech companies convinced politicians to use antitrust laws against an emerging competitors. In the late 1990s, lobbyists and executives from IBM, Sun, AOL, and Oracle pressured state attorneys general and the Justice Department to bring antitrust cases against Microsoft to hinder innovation and competition from Redmond. Now, it’s happening again – this time with a role reversal and new targets under attack.
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