Sean Heather, Senior Vice President of International Regulatory Affairs & Antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warns of three reasons why the pending anti-tech bills “will mark the beginning, not the end, of the government’s latest assault on the free market.” 

1. The bills outlaw practices “routinely used today” across “every industry.” “Each of the pending bills outline a series of business practices that would be deemed ‘unfair.’ Yet all of these practices are routinely used today by competitors not only in the same industry, but also by every industry. Under these bills, any company that both sells its own line of products, and the products of competitors, could be accused of competing ‘unfairly.'”

— Heather continues: “It is naive to think that declaring business conduct arbitrarily unlawful for just a few companies will not, over time, become unlawful for all.” 

2. The bills “embolden a government-knows-best approach to managing our economy.” “These bills represent a gateway to a larger agenda, an agenda supported by the false notion that our economy is over-concentrated, stagnant, and anticompetitive, and that the government, not the market, should dictate economic outcomes. And this agenda is hiding in plain sight at the highest levels of our government.”

— Heather recalls Congressman Ken Buck’s comments during a University of Chicago event: “If we can’t get meaningful legislation on big tech, we won’t be able to get meaningful legislation passed for other industries.”

3. The bills ignore that “market capitalization changes over time” and is not synonymous with competition. “The problem is market-capitalization rises and falls, often over short periods of time. The largest companies by market cap today are not the same from a decade ago and are unlikely to be the same ten years down the road. So today, the bill may only capture a few companies targeted by the legislation, but that will change over time. A recent economic study concludes that 13 companies from various industries could reach the market-cap threshold in the near future, potentially subjecting these companies’ business practices to be stringently managed by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission.”