Opinion | US tech giants are playing up the China threat to oppose an antitrust bill. They may succeed
- The American Innovation and Choice Online Act aims to prevent Silicon Valley titans like Apple and Google from stifling competitors on their platforms
- In a bid to retain their power, Big Tech firms have argued the bill would harm US security by allowing China to get ahead
Last month, the US Senate Judiciary Committee approved the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, a bill which aims to prevent Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft from giving their own products preferential treatment on their platforms.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, the chair of the antitrust subcommittee, claimed that the vote marked the first time that a major technology bill on competition has advanced to the Senate floor “since the dawn of the internet”. But the bill’s fate is uncertain, in part due to the perception that it might advantage China.
The tech-funded Progressive Policy Institute asserted that it would harm US national security to break up America’s “national champions” while China is on America’s heels. And an official at the industry association NetChoice said the bill would cause the US to “cede ground to foreign competitors and open up American data to dangerous and untrustworthy actors”.
Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project adds that tech giants with outsized market power and convoluted corporate structures often innovate at a slower rate than firms in competitive markets would. American consumers would have better products if market competition forced Google and Facebook – which control 90 per cent of the market in search and personal social networks respectively – to outcompete their rivals rather than simply acquiring them.
