Source: United States Senator for Minnesota Amy Klobuchar
“We need to put some rules of the road in place to protect consumers and to protect our democracy itself”
WATCH KLOBUCHAR INTERVIEW HERE
WASHINGTON – Last week on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, explained why her bipartisan legislation to stop dominant digital platforms from unfairly preferencing their own products and services will protect consumers and small businesses.
During the interview, she outlined how the American Innovation and Choice Online Act will “make it more fair for people to buy stuff. We blatantly say you cannot go and steal some company that’s advertising on your platform in India — Amazon — and then create a knockoff product and make it cheaper.”
She continued: “You also can’t put all your stuff on the top of the search engine when you’re the only game in town. In essence, this would make it illegal for Amazon, Google, Apple to engage in self-preferencing.”
Klobuchar also:
- Detailed why Big Tech companies raise so many complex competition issues.
- “Mark Zuckerberg most likely speaks for all monopolists when he once wrote in an email ‘I’d rather than buy than compete.’”
- “So the idea is, they buy up everything in sight..and then suddenly there’s no competitor out there. Maybe that competitor could have developed the bells and whistles to have better protections for children or better protections from misinformation or better prices, depending on what the platform is. We’ll never know that.”
- Clarified that the bill will not hurt consumers.
- “Nothing here will destroy Amazon Basics. We need to put some rules of the road in place — not destroy them, not take them down, as they like to say — but put some rules in place to protect consumers and to protect our democracy itself.”
- Emphasized that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act is bipartisan, with support from Senators across the political spectrum. The legislation is cosponsored by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), John Kennedy (R-LA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Mark Warner (D-VA), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Steve Daines (R-MT).
Click HERE to watch the full interview.
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