Washington, D.C. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) slammed a bill introduced in Congress on Wednesday that would prohibit tech companies from prioritizing their own businesses on their websites. The bill would stop tech giants from giving preference to their own businesses on their websites. Amazon said that the bill unfairly targets the retailer while not applying the same rules to competitors.
There have been reports that the Senate could vote on the bill as soon as this month. Even though top executives like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook fought hard against the bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed it in January. Last year, it also got through the House Judiciary Committee.
In a blog post, Amazon said that the bill “threatens two of the things that Americans love most about Amazon: the wide selection and low prices that come from letting third-party sellers sell on our site, and the promise of fast, free shipping through Amazon Prime.”
It said that the bill only applies to Amazon because it needs to have a market value of at least $550 billion to be regulated. Competitors like Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), and CVS were left out of the bill, the group said.
“In 2021, Walmart made $559 billion a year, which was almost $90 billion more than Amazon,” it said. “But Walmart isn’t included, even though it’s also a big store and has an online marketplace where small businesses can sell.“
Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley, who are co-sponsors of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, say it is important to protect small businesses with this law. Small business groups like the Main Street Alliance and Small Business Rising are in favor of the bill.
Amazon said that the bill could hurt the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that sell goods on its website because the large fines for breaking the law “would make it hard to justify the risk of Amazon offering a marketplace where selling partners can participate.”
It said that the bill would require “Amazon to let other logistics providers fulfill Prime orders” and could make it “potentially impossible for Amazon and our selling partners to offer products with Prime’s” free two-day shipping.
Congress has been putting pressure on big tech companies like Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) and Apple over claims that they have abused their huge market power. There have been many bills proposed to stop them, but none of them has become law.
