Top officials in the Biden administration are working with Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar on new anti-monopoly legislation to rein in Big Tech companies, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The move indicates the White House is shifting some attention away from the bipartisan antitrust bills moving through the House.
Tim Wu, Biden’s tech czar in the White House and one of the loudest critics of Silicon Valley’s powers, along with others within Biden’s National Economic Council, are working directly with Klobuchar and her staff on tech-related antitrust legislation, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Klobuchar is the chairwoman of the Senate antitrust panel that has jurisdiction over the Big Tech companies. She recently wrote a 600-page book on antitrust.
One of the Klobuchar bills Wu is focused on would prohibit online businesses — such as Google, Amazon, and Apple — from taking actions that favor their own products and services on their own platforms, also referred to as nondiscrimination legislation.
Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, the chairman of the House antitrust panel, already has a bill aimed at this problem called the Platform Anti-Monopoly Act. That bill passed the House Judiciary Committee in June, along with five other bipartisan anti-Big Tech bills, and is expected to head to the House floor in the coming months.
“The White House and Klobuchar are working on a bill that is an analog to Cicilline’s anti-discrimination bill but takes a different approach. They’re starting with a whole new template,” a liberal think tank scholar who works with Democrats told the Washington Examiner.
The scholar said Klobuchar’s bill will be more targeted than the Cicilline bill and will focus on ensuring popular tech features, such as pre-installed phone apps or convenient Google Maps features prominently located within Google searches, are not restricted.
“They’re trying to build an anti-discrimination bill that ensures Big Tech platforms can’t advantage their own products but doesn’t allow the nasty anti-consumer stuff — so have all the good parts while keeping out the bad,” the think tank researcher added.
The House legislative package, which represents the largest expansion of the federal government’s antitrust powers in generations, is facing resistance among Democrats, as Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in June.
A significant number of centrists and representatives of California, where much of the tech industry is headquartered, said Cicilline’s nondiscrimination bill and others that passed the House Judiciary committee are too broad and could harm innovation, resulting in unintended consequences to consumers.
Democrats say the bills improperly favor the demands of large companies and small businesses trying to compete with the Big Tech companies over the welfare of consumers and Big Tech features and services.
In addition, many Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan of Ohio, oppose the bills because they fail to address censorship of conservatives.
On the other hand, Klobuchar’s antitrust approach in the Senate is gaining support within the White House.
“Tim and the economic team at the White House are working directly with Klobuchar on these bills in ways they didn’t with the House antitrust bills. They have a lot of respect and trust in her and her approach,” a senior House Democratic lawmaker told the Washington Examiner.
Wu, 48, is well known for his confrontational approach to the tech industry and his advocacy for stronger competition laws. He has broad support from left-wing Democrats and anti-monopoly groups fighting to break up or regulate Big Tech companies for years.
He has advanced the idea big corporations use economic power to create political power and that this can harm democracy, which is why the government needs to consider breaking them up, according to a main argument in his 2018 book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Democrats unsure if the House antitrust package will pass are optimistic the White House’s interest in Klobuchar’s bills could result in a legislative win.
“The White House is looking at Klobuchar’s bills as a reset in terms of how to effectively take on the Big Tech companies in Congress, that perhaps has a better chance of actually passing than Cicilline’s bill,” the lawmaker said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Klobuchar is expected to release new bipartisan antitrust tech legislation in the coming months. Klobuchar’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
