US rolls out major bills to clip Big Tech’s wings

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers unveiled sweeping antitrust measures on Friday aimed at tempering the dominance of Big Tech firms, including Apple and Facebook, in what may be the most ambitious effort to break corporate monopolies.

A bipartisan group of House members introduced five separate bills that propose changes so comprehensive that they could reshape the largest US tech and entertainment companies and force an overhaul of their business practices.

In a bid to ward off corporate consolidation, the measures would make it harder for large -companies such as Amazon and

Google to buy out smaller competitors, and facilitate the break-up of firms that use their dominant positions in their core business to make deep inroads into another.

Tech monopolies “are in a unique position to pick winners and losers, destroy small businesses, raise prices on consumers, and put folks out of work”, the House judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee chairman David Cicilline, a Democrat, said while introducing the measures.

The goal, he said, is to “level the playing field” and ensure that powerful tech companies follow the same rules as other businesses.

The bills follow a 16-month investigation by the antitrust subcommittee into the state of competition in the digital marketplace, and particularly the unregulated power wielded by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.

Silicon Valley giants have come under increasing fire in Europe and the US due to concerns over their monopoly-like powers. Also, US President Joe Biden and other G7 countries are keen to set a global tax rate of at least 15% on multinational firms, in a bid to optimise tax revenue from the tech behemoths.

The antitrust bills need to be debated and voted favourably out of the judiciary committee before receiving a vote by the full House of Representatives. They would also need approval from the Senate before they are signed into law by Biden.