Washington, D.C. – Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced its lawsuit against Amazon alleging that the online retail uses “anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.”
Patrice Onwuka, director of the Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) at Independent Women’s Forum, issued the following statement:
“The Federal Trade Commission exists to protect competition in the marketplace. The FTC is guided by a standard that places consumer welfare––specifically whether a consumer is better off as measured by price changes–at its core. Today, the FTC, led by Lina Khan, signals it intends to abandon a decades-long commitment to consumer welfare to advance her own retro antitrust agenda. Randomly targeting big companies like Amazon simply because they are big players in an industry upends a philosophy that has guided the U.S. economy through decades of tremendous technological advancement.
“Khan is ignoring the losses of popular services that consumers overwhelmingly value and the hardship imposed on the ecosystem of smaller businesses that depend on bigger entities for survival, to push her own agenda. Big companies become more efficient at delivering goods to consumers by investing in their own development. This leads to more choices, lower prices and better selections often than smaller competitors—a win for consumers. By investing $100 billion, Amazon has developed a jaw-dropping logistics apparatus of nationwide warehouses and fulfillment centers and transportation and delivery networks that can get packages to millions of consumers in as quickly as a few hours. Some 85% of users value Amazon Prime’s free one-day and two-day shipping, but Khan’s lawsuit places this service at risk.
“Khan couldn’t be too serious about market competition either if she’s willing to pull the rug from under the two million small businesses that sell on Amazon–competing directly with the retailer’s products–or rely on its soup-to-nuts fulfillment services to get their goods in the hands of consumers.
“Khan is not just suing one consumer-friendly company, but using this lawsuit to overturn an approach to antitrust law that has delivered immeasurable benefits and savings to everyday consumers and small businesses.”