Big Tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Google are waging a massive lobbying offensive in Washington DC to halt the passage of major antitrust legislation.
The New York Times reports that senior tech executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google global affairs VP Kent Walker (known for his infamous “blip in history” comment) are making calls to top congressional Democrats warning against passing the suite of antitrust bills recently advanced by the House Judiciary Committee.
Via the New York Times:
The calls by Mr. Cook are part of a forceful and wide-ranging pushback by the tech industry since the proposals were announced this month. Executives, lobbyists, and more than a dozen think tanks and advocacy groups paid by tech companies have swarmed Capitol offices, called and emailed lawmakers and their staff members, and written letters arguing there will be dire consequences for the industry and the country if the ideas become law.
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Amazon’s top lobbyist, Brian Huseman, rarely speaks publicly about bills before there is a vote. But with the House Judiciary Committee expected to vote on the bills on Wednesday, he warned in a statement on Tuesday that the legislation “would have significant negative effects on the hundreds of thousands of American small- and medium-sized businesses that sell in our store and tens of millions of consumers who buy products from Amazon.”
Google’s senior vice president for global affairs, Kent Walker, has also made calls to lawmakers in recent days, and the company’s top lobbyist, Mark Isakowitz, has weighed in on how the bills would alter how people use the internet. “American consumers and small businesses would be shocked at how these bills would break many of their favorite services,” he said in a statement. A spokesman for Facebook, Christopher Sgro, said that antitrust laws “should promote competition and protect consumers, not punish successful American companies.”
Big Tech isn’t the only far-left industry flooding D.C. with lobbyists in light of proposed changes to tech regulation. As Breitbart News previously reported, Big Media lobbyists working on behalf of media giants like News Corporation, USA Today and the New York Times have repeatedly attempted to push for passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a law that would allow big media companies greater to form a cartel to pressure tech companies for special treatment and handouts.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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