By Jorge Vazquez
26 Sep 2023, 2:48 PM EDT
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon.com, Inc., arguing that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.
The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to prevent rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for buyers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from competing fairly against Amazon. .
The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is large, but because it adopts an exclusionary course of conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging.
By stifling competition on price, product selection and quality, and preventing current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of buyers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rivals can threaten its dominance, the FTC says in a statement. and highlights that Amazon’s far-reaching plans impact hundreds of billions of dollars in retail sales each year, affect hundreds of thousands of products sold by businesses large and small, and affect more than one hundred million shoppers.
“Our complaint exposes how Amazon has used a range of punitive and coercive tactics to illegally maintain its monopolies,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.
The lawsuit lays out detailed allegations that point out how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that depend on Amazon. to buy.
Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon accountable for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.
“We brought this case because Amazon’s illegal conduct has stifled competition across a huge swath of the online economy. “Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to raise prices on American buyers and charge sky-high fees to hundreds of thousands of online sellers,” said John Newman, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Rarely in the history of American antitrust law has a case had the potential to do so much good for so many people.”
The FTC and the states allege that Amazon’s anticompetitive conduct occurs in two markets: the online department store market that serves shoppers and the market for online marketplace services purchased by sellers.
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