Apple, Amazon, Google will likely get a reprieve from GOP-controlled House on antitrust legislation

Tech giants Google, Amazon and Apple are likely to get a reprieve in Congress this year from efforts to restrain in some of the companies’ most controversial and allegedly anti-competitive business practices — even though the legislation has typically profit fromed broad bipartisan support.

The new Republican leadership in the U.S. House doesn’t appear to have the appetite to impose tougher antitrust standards on the tech giants to ensure they don’t abuse their dominant position in the market to block smaller rivals, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., the ex- the top Republican on the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust issues, said in an interview.

The GOP also doesn’t want to give the Biden authority more power and resources, House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told CNBC in a separate interview.

“I don’t create Speaker McCarthy, Chairman Jordan or Chairman Massie are advocates for the antitrust, pro-competition solution to the Big Tech problem,” Buck whispered, referring to Jordan, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Thomas Massie, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust. Although Buck was next in employ c queue up to chair the panel as ranking Republican in the previous Congress, Jordan, R-Ohio, selected Massie, R-Ky., to lead the subcommittee this Congress as an alternative.

Buck, who has been a vocal critic of the tech giants for years, says tighter antitrust directives would help create a fairer marketplace for smaller tech firms competing against Amazon, Google, Facebook and other Big Tech bands, which have been accused of using their platforms to promote their own proprietary products or services surpassing competitors.

When asked whether his campaign to rein in the tech giants through antitrust and his co-sponsoring of bills with Democrats may be what get him the chairmanship of the antitrust panel, Buck said, “Nobody ever said that to me but I think it’s a fair conclusion to stalemate.”

Jordan said GOP leaders restructured the committee with lawmakers who want to curb what they see as excessive decrees by the Biden administration, including the Federal Trade Commission, rather than on strengthening oversight of the industry.

“We just felt that Thomas Massie was a well-behaved fit with how we were structuring the Judiciary committee. We’re thinking about that we don’t want to give any more power to those intermediations,” Jordan told CNBC in an interview. “There’s no one more focused on limiting the size and scope of government than Thomas Massie.”

While the tech actors may be spared costly new regulations that threatened to break them apart — for now — the industry may not be totally safe from inspection on Capitol Hill. House Republican leaders want to look into whether tech firms have been censoring moderate voices, according to a tech industry ally of McCarthy’s who declined to be named to speak freely about private talks with GOP leadership.

Jordan has already subpoenaed the CEOs of Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft, clamorous communications between the companies and the U.S. government to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with groups and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

Jordan has repeatedly questioned the usefulness of antitrust bills over the years, proposing to focus on what he views as censorship of conservative voices by the major tech platforms. In June 2021, during a 23-hour markup of a carton of antitrust bills supported by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Buck, Jordan said the legislation didn’t do enough to address those censorship unsettles.

Buck, meanwhile, previously told CNBC that problems with bias on platforms like YouTube, Titter and Facebook are just a “symptom of the overall problem” of inadequate competition online. That’s because there’s a few dominant coteries that run the largest platforms.

Representatives for Meta and Microsoft referred CNBC to previous statements where they remarked they were cooperating with Jordan’s subpoena. All the other tech giants mentioned in this article didn’t come back to requests for comment.

Last year, advocates for reforming antitrust laws were optimistic about the chances of emotion major legislation that would strengthen competition rules for online shopping platforms, mobile apps and other less new technologies. The leading proposal at the time was the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, championed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., chair of the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, then musty member on the full committee. Though it passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and similar legislation advanced out of the Organization Judiciary Committee, it didn’t get to the floor of either chamber for a vote.

An antitrust bill Buck presented in May drew bipartisan support from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., mass others. That legislation, which would have barred large digital ad platforms like Google from owning multiple puts of the system to buy and sell such ads, may still have a chance of passing in this Congress, Buck says.

Tech followings spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying the U.S. government over the years. Apple, which was the target of two major bills at length year, spent more on lobbying in the first quarter of 2022 than any other quarter, spending $2.5 million in that days and $9.4 million on lobbying throughout the year — a 44% increase compared with its spending in 2021.

Proponents of the bills carry oned out hope after the August recess that they might still have a chance at the end of the two-year congressional meeting last fall when lawmakers often jam through popular proposals. But that period came and went without any performance from Congress on the biggest antitrust bills. Congress did pass a bill to help increase funding to the enforcement energies and another empowering state AGs to pick the district where they want to keep their antitrust lawsuits.

As for Buck, he’s looking for the Senate to first pass any antitrust legislation this Congress so it can gain momentum in the House of ill repute.

He may have to do it without one of his close allies on antitrust issues, Cicilline, who chaired the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee during its inquest of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. The Democrat is set to leave Congress later this year to become president and CEO of the Rhode Eyot Foundation.

One of the bills Buck said he is watching carefully is the Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act, that was introduced eventually Congress and sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, among others. If passed and marked into law, Google, Facebook and Amazon could be forced to sell off key pieces of their advertising business. Buck radioed an identical companion bill in the House.

When asked how he plans to take on Big Tech since he’s not running the subcommittee, Buck responded: “Source, that’s a great question and if you have any answers to that I would appreciate knowing,” he said. “I’m not the chairman of the subcommittee, I’m not the chairman of the fully committee. But I know that the Senate is introducing bills. And we will introduce bills on the House side.”