Josh Hawley to introduce bill to “bust-up” Big Tech companies

Republican Senator Josh Hawley will introduce a bill on Monday that aims to “bust-up” Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon.

The bill, called the Bust Up Big Tech Act, comes after a bill Hawley introduced that would ban the merger of companies worth more than $100 billion.

The bill would prevent companies, such as Amazon, from running an online marketplace and selling goods on that marketplace. The bill would also ban companies that own online marketplaces or search engines from owning website hosting services.

“Woke Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon have been coddled by Washington politicians for years,” said Hawley in a statement. “This treatment has allowed them to amass colossal amounts of power that they use to censor political opinions that they don’t agree with and shut out competitors who offer consumers an alternative to the status quo. It’s past time to bust up Big Tech companies, restore competition, and give power back the American consumers.” 

Hawley’s bill would ban Amazon from selling Amazon-branded products on Amazon Marketplace. The bill would also prevent Amazon from owning large amounts of cloud computing services that both Amazon and its competitors use.

The bill would also allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to oversee compliance with the new laws the bill would create and would also allow state prosecutors and individual citizens to sue companies that are believed to violate laws.

Hawley’s bill would be unlikely to pass without any changes from Democrats, but Hawley is open to working with the other side.

“I’m willing to work with her and anybody of any party and any background,” said Hawley to Reuters when asked about a similar bill introduced by Democrat Amy Klobuchar banning mergers of certain companies.

“[H]is claims that the industry, ‘hasn’t been a success … for the American economy,’ don’t ring true for so many Americans that are employed by or invested in these economic powerhouses, not to mention the millions of consumers who enjoy tech products,” said Jessica Melugin, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) Center for Technology and Innovation.

“[Amazon] should be broken up,” said Hawley last week. “No one company should be able to control e-commerce AND privilege its own products on the same platform AND control the cloud.”