(Bloomberg) -- Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan stopped short of explicitly calling for a breakup of Amazon.com Inc., but said that her agency would ask a judge to halt the company’s “illegal conduct” if its antitrust suit succeeds.
In her first public comments after the FTC filed a lawsuit accusing Amazon of monopolizing online marketplace services, Khan said businesses that want to sell their goods online were effectively forced to pay Amazon’s rates, including for advertising and logistics services.
“At the very least, any relief would require that the company halt those tactics,” Khan said at Bloomberg’s Washington office on Tuesday. “But as I noted, effective relief also needs to be restoring competition to this market, which we’ll be asking the judge to do as well.”
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, doesn’t ask for specific remedies, but mentions “structural relief,” which in antitrust lingo often means divesting an asset or breaking up a business. Amazon says it will defend itself against the lawsuit, and that what the FTC seeks will lead to higher prices and hurt businesses that rely on Amazon to get their goods to shoppers.
“This case is about the competition that has been lost because of Amazon’s monopolization and unlawful tactics,” Khan said.
FTC’s Khan Says Amazon Suit Would Restore Competition (Video)
The Amazon case is a career-defining moment for Khan, the youngest ever FTC chair whose blockbuster 2017 law review article about the e-commerce giant catapulted her to celebrity status in the world of antitrust. Before joining the FTC, Khan worked on a congressional subcommittee investigating the four major US tech giants, which culminated in a 2020 report finding evidence of market consolidation. The lawsuit is part of an effort by antitrust enforcers to crack down on the biggest tech platforms, coming after monopolization suits filed against Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc.
As FTC chair, Khan has sought to more aggressively police mergers, particularly those by the biggest technology companies, as well as anticompetitive conduct by the largest US companies. But the agency’s results have been mixed as it suffered two court defeats so far this year.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Seattle, the FTC and 17 states accused Amazon of engaging in conduct to exclude rivals in online marketplace services and stifle competition. The company is also accused of illegally forcing merchants who sell on its online marketplace to use its logistics service and imposing policies that lead to artificially high prices for consumers.
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