Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new research deck on how Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley’s anti-tech antitrust bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, could do irreparable harm to the services and products millions of Americans rely on every day.
“The bill is notable for combining very broad language, very heavy penalties, and very narrow grounds for affirmative defense,” said Dr. Michael Mandel, Vice President and Chief Economist for the Progressive Policy Institute. “The problem is that this three-way combination goes far beyond imposing normal compliance costs and regulatory burdens, creating huge financial and business risks for even ordinary business decisions.”
Well-liked services such as Google Search, Fulfillment by Amazon, and the Apple App Store, could have to be substantially reconfigured and/or limited, according to the deck’s authors, Mandel, John Scalf of NERA Economic Consulting and D. Daniel Sokol of University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Popular smartphone features and user reviews on online marketplaces could be affected as well. These proposed standards would not only undermine the tech companies that would be subjected to the legislation, but inevitably harm its users.
Consumers could also suffer from reduced innovation, as the targeted companies would have to obtain regulatory pre-approval with every new product or meet the unspecified criteria in the bill.
A mark-up of the bill is scheduled for Thursday of this week in the Judiciary Committee. Read PPI’s statement on the markup and the bill here.
View the full deck here:
This deck was authored by Michael Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute, John Scalf of NERA Economic Consulting, and D. Daniel Sokol of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
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