A major antitrust bill to rein in Big Tech is poised to be reintroduced in Congress – but insiders fret that key Democrats with cozy ties to Silicon Valley could undermine their own party’s agenda.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is leading a push to resurrect the American Innovation and Competition Online Act. The bill would block Big Tech firms from “self-preferencing” their own services — for example Google promoting its shopping tool in search results while demoting rival services.
Reintroduction of AICOA is a “priority” for Nadler, who is set to sponsor the legislation and wants to get it done by the end of June, a congressional source close to the situation told The Post. The Senate version of the bill was reintroduced last year and co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
“Reintroduction will happen, it’s just a matter of getting the members together and dotting some ‘I’s and crossing some ‘T’s,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
AICOA advanced past committee in 2022 with broad bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. However, the legislation ultimately stalled without receiving a full floor vote after a furious lobbying effort by tech firms in which Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly placed direct calls to lawmakers.
Some of the bill’s supporters fear a similar outcome this time around in the current session of Congress, which already has a full slate of legislative priorities on deck, including the Kids Online Safety Act.
Senate lawmakers are in “active negotiations” regarding a potential reintroduction of the AICOA, a Senate source close to the situation said. However, the source said the bill faces an uphill battle in both chambers of Congress, with stubborn opposition from holdout Republicans and Democrats.
Some sources expressed skepticism that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who controls the agenda for the upper chamber and declined to hold a vote on the bill last session, will back a revived push for AICOA.
Schumer, who has faced scrutiny over his Big Tech ties, was spotted meeting with Google’s Pichai at this office last week, NBC News reported.
In 2022, Schumer’s office told antitrust advocates that he would bring AICOA to the floor as long as they could prove they had the 60 votes required for passage, Politico reported at the time.
In a statement to The Post, Klobuchar called securing the bill’s passage a “key priority.”
“Right now we’re facing a monopoly problem as dominant digital platforms – some of the most powerful companies the world has ever known – increasingly abuse their power by preferencing their own products and services while harming small businesses and entrepreneurs trying to compete online,” said Klobuchar. “There is bipartisan agreement that we must enact common sense rules of the road to boost innovation and increase choices for consumers.”
In the House, multiple GOP lawmakers have been approached about stepping in to replace former Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who cosponsored the bill in the past but left Congress earlier this year, sources said.
Nadler’s press secretary did not return requests for comment.
Another hurdle comes in the form of Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.), who became the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee last year in what one senior Democratic aide told CNBC was a “great windfall for the tech companies.”
Correa has irritated Big Tech critics, including members of his own party, by consistently bucking efforts to crack down on the industry, sources familiar with the situation said. The congressman’s chief of staff, Rene Munoz, is a former lobbyist for Amazon and Apple.
Correa opposed AICOA and other tech antitrust bills when they came up for consideration in the past, telling Politico at the time that he feared they would “essentially push away investment in this area” and “stifle the economics behind it.”
Fight For The Future, a digital rights watchdog group, has been among the most vocal of Correa’s critics. Last month, the group parked a billboard truck outside a Correa fundraiser in Washington DC urging the congressman to “stop standing up for Big Tech.”
“One corporate-friendly member of Congress shouldn’t be able to derail bipartisan antitrust legislation that’s overwhelmingly supported by voters from across the political spectrum,” said Fight For The Future director Evan Greer.
Correa’s defenders note that a Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), currently chairs the House Judiciary Committee and wields majority influence over its agenda. Any attempt to bring back AICOA would need his go-ahead.
Correa spokesman Adriano Pucci pushed back on criticism of his stance on antitrust issues.
“Even when Democrats were in the majority, these yet-to-be introduced bills didn’t muster enough support to pass. And we’ve gotten no indication that they’re at the forefront of House Republicans’ agenda, either,” Pucci said in a statement.
“Putting Main Street first and making sure business owners have the tools they need to thrive is Ranking Member Correa’s top priority—not pleasing outside groups supported by ‘big tech’s’ billion-dollar competitors or picking sides in a fight between tech billionaires,” Pucci added.
Critics also pointed to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), another House antitrust subcommittee member and vocal critic of the Big Tech antitrust crackdown.
In 2021, she declared that Big Tech antitrust bills, including AICOA, would “create more harm than good for American consumers and the US economy.”
Lofgren, whose district includes Silicon Valley, has a daughter who works on Google’s legal team, as The Post has reported. The congresswoman has received a whopping $374,000 from Google since 2015, according to disclosures.
When reached for comment, Lofgren said she has “never hesitated to champion consumer-first and privacy-centered tech issues.”
“I oppose legislation that is poorly drafted and will not serve my constituents,” Lofgren said. “When it comes to the American Innovation and Competition Online Act, specifically, as it was introduced, it was poorly written and is a defective piece of legislation.”
Lofgren added that it would be “false” to imply that her daughter’s work at Google, where she is not part of the antitrust legal team, has any bearing on her work in Congress.
Nadler is also looking to rally support for other stalled antitrust bills that were part of a highly-publicized bipartisan package backed by Buck and former Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) last Congress.
That includes the ACCESS Act, which would require Big Tech firms to make it easy for users to transfer their data to other services, as well as a so-called “breakup bill” that would allow the feds to sue to break up Big Tech monopolies if they pose a conflict of interest.
