A bipartisan group of lawmakers reintroduced the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) this month. As Jack Nicastro argues in Reason, although the bill promises to deliver innovation and choice in the technology sector, it would undermine both.
AICOA would place restrictions on “systemically important platforms,” such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and limit their ability to engage in numerous common business practices. Nicastro writes that while supporters of the bill claim its goal is to “restore online competition,” it would make it harder for leading U.S. platforms to compete.
As Nicastro explains, under the Sherman Act, plaintiffs typically must establish three things to successfully sue a firm for anticompetitive conduct. But AICOA breaks with this established framework at every turn, despite U.S. antitrust laws having already proved more than capable of addressing allegedly anticompetitive behavior by Big Tech.
AICOA risks harming the economy, hurting consumers by chilling procompetitive business practices, and stymieing innovation by undermining firms’ ability to monetize the multibillion-dollar investments required to generate and sustain new products on their platforms. Additionally, Nicastro argues that AICOA would weaken the U.S. government’s credibility when it attempts to push back against analogous attacks on domestic tech companies abroad, compromising America’s ability to defend its engines of growth.
Read the commentary in Reason.
