Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was described by HuffPost in 2020 as a “rising star” and the “smartest senator.” Eventually, she ran for president in 2020, languished in the middle of the field, dropped out to endorse Joe Biden, and went back to the Senate.
Now, she’s introducing a bill with another “rising star”: Tom Cotton, R-Ark.
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On Friday, Cotton and Klobuchar introduced the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act.
The new act builds on the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, and it enables the Federal Trade Commission to sue tech companies for buying up their nascent competitors.
It has become common for tech giants to buy out emerging companies. For example, Apple did not invent Siri. Apple merely acquired it from a smaller company in 2010.
The bill was introduced in the House last June by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York and a protege of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It is still awaiting a vote.
Klobuchar has worked with Republicans on Big Tech antitrust before.
Last month, she joined Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to fight vertical integration in the tech industry. She and Grassley announced a bill to ban “self-preferencing,” the practice in which tech companies giving their own products an advantage over the products of a rival sharing their platform.
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Libertarian-minded journalists have criticized Klobuchar’s bill. One commentator alleged that the bill would shelter Target, a giant retailer headquartered in Klobuchar’s state.
Plus, some House members have contended that Klobuchar’s bill doesn’t go far enough. Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., introduced the controversial Ending Platform Monopolies Act in June. Jayapal’s bill would prohibit tech companies from operating another service suspected of creating a conflict of interest.
For example, Amazon offers both e-commerce and cloud computing, and the cloud services are growing more quickly. Under Jayapal’s bill, that may no longer be the case.
The Cotton / Klobuchar Big Tech anti-monopoly bill has a $600 billion market cap threshold pegged to the "date of enactment," which basically means that Target and Walmart (coincidentally headquartered in these senators' home states) are sheltered. https://t.co/5BqPuc9ggb
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) November 8, 2021
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Klobuchar chairs the judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, and she wrote a book on the subject last year. The book, Antitrust, became the subject of a joke on Twitter, since Pete Buttigieg — her rival as a presidential candidate — had recently released a memoir called Trust.
She passed more legislation than any other senator from 2015 to 2017, GovTrack reported. In other words, she introduces bills at a rapid-fire pace, and she often joins Republicans to do it.
That Klobuchar has a new book called ANTITRUST and Buttigieg’s is called TRUST suggests the writers of this season are trying hard but I just don’t know
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 21, 2021
The Horn editorial team