Amazon wants the newly appointed Democratic Federal Trade Commission chairwoman, Lina Khan, a vocal anti-monopolist, to be recused from any matters involving the company because of her history of criticizing the retail giant.
Amazon filed a petition with the FTC on Wednesday asking that Khan not be allowed to handle any enforcement decisions involving the company because she “has already made up her mind” that the company is guilty of monopolistic behavior.
The petition highlights Amazon’s fear of the trade commission amid new bipartisan calls for increased antitrust enforcement.
In its request, Amazon cited Khan’s previous employment at an antitrust advocacy group, Open Markets Institute, and her role in the House antitrust investigation of Big Tech companies in 2019 and 2020 as evidence of her prior judgment against the company.
Khan “has on numerous occasions argued that Amazon is guilty of antitrust violations and should be broken up,” Amazon said in its petition.
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“Given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws, a reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can consider the company’s antitrust defenses with an open mind,” Amazon said.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a prominent Big Tech critic, hit back at Amazon, saying Wednesday that Khan’s past criticism of Amazon was “precisely why she was a good choice for the FTC.”
Khan won a wide following in the tech policy world as a student at Yale Law School in 2017 with an article called, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” She argued that the traditional benchmark of whether a company had a monopoly, higher prices, did not account for what she called anti-competitive behavior on the part of the retail giant.
An antitrust panel investigation by the trade commission, which Khan helped guide as an aide to Democratic Commissioner Rohit Chopra, concluded that expansive reforms are needed for large tech platforms, including banning them from competing with smaller companies that are dependent on their services in certain markets. This could mean, for example, that Amazon could not sell products similar to ones that smaller firms invented and sold on the Amazon platform.
The House is considering a bipartisan package of anti-Big Tech bills aimed at reining in companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
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The bills would give the FTC greater resources and authority to regulate and even break up tech giants, including Amazon.
