As Amazon grows following the announcement of their Whole Foods Market Inc. purchase, the US government is reportedly considering taking a closer look at the e-commerce giant.
MarketWatch reports that following a number of announcements by Amazon, including their bid to buy Whole Foods and the reveal of Amazon Wardrobe among many other new business ventures, two investor calls on Thursday raised concerns that the company was getting too big and was coming to the attention of the US government.
Douglass Kass, head of Seabreeze Partners Management, voiced his concerns, saying, “I am shorting Amazon today because I have learned that there are currently early discussions and due diligence being considered in the legislative chambers in Washington DC with regard to possible antitrust opposition to Amazon’s business practices, pricing strategy and expansion announcements already made (as well as being aimed at expansion strategies being considered in the future.”
Kass continued to say, “My understanding is that certain Democrats in the Senate have instituted the very recent and preliminary investigation of Amazon’s possible adverse impact on competition,” he said. “But, in the Trump administration, we also have a foe against Jeff Bezos, who not only runs Amazon but happens to own an editorially unfriendly (to President Trump) newspaper, The Washington Post.”
In May 2016, Donald Trump accused Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos of using the Washington Post, which he also owns, to attack the then-candidate because Bezos was afraid Trump would “go after him” for his “huge antitrust problem.”
Trader Steve Kaplan also joined Kass in his short of the Amazon stock. Kaplan reportedly believes that not only is Amazon stock likely to fall but that another recession may be looming over us soon: “We are likely to experience an especially severe recession since so much money has come out of safe time deposits like bank accounts and money-market funds and has gone into fluctuating assets including real estate, corporate bonds, stocks, and especially the most popular overpriced garbage including Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, Nvidia, etc.,” said Kaplan.
On Friday, Representative David Cicilline, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representative’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee calling for a hearing over Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. “Congress has a responsibility to fully scrutinize this merger before it goes ahead,” he wrote.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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