Amazon.com Inc is asking that the new head of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) step aside from antitrust investigations into the e-commerce giant, contending that her past public criticism of the company’s market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial.
Amazon on Wednesday petitioned the agency to remove FTC Chair Lina Khan from taking part in probes of the company’s market conduct.
Khan has been a fierce critic of tech giants Facebook Inc, Google and Apple Inc, as well as Amazon. She arrived on the antitrust scene in 2017, writing an influential study titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” when she was a law student at Yale University.
Photo: AFP
Agency officials declined to comment on Amazon’s motion.
The agency could be expected to respond formally at some point.
As counsel to a US House of Representatives antitrust panel in 2019 and last year, Khan played a key role in a sweeping bipartisan investigation of the market power of the four tech giants.
US President Joe Biden last month installed Khan as one of five commissioners and head of the FTC, signaling a tough stance toward big tech and its market dominance.
At 32, she is the youngest head in the history of the agency, which polices competition and consumer protection in industry generally, as well as digital privacy.
“Due process entitles all individuals and companies to fair consideration of the merits of any investigation or adjudication by impartial commissioners who have not — and, equally importantly, who do not appear to have — prejudged the issues against them,” Amazon said in the motion.
The FTC has been investigating the tech giants.
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed antitrust lawsuits brought against Facebook by the FTC and a coalition of US states, saying that they did not provide enough evidence to prove that Facebook is a monopoly in the social networking market.
However, the judge allowed the FTC to revise its complaint and try again.
US regulators say that Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, controls 50 to 70 percent of online market sales.
Founded by Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, Amazon runs an e-commerce empire and ventures in cloud computing, personal smart technology and beyond.
Some independent merchants who sell products on Amazon.com have complained about the company’s practices, such as contract provisions said to prevent sellers from offering their products at lower prices or on better terms on any other online platform, including their own Web sites.
New legislative proposals approved last week by the House Judiciary Committee raised the issue of a possible forced spinoff of Amazon’s private-label products that compete with vendors on the platform.
In its defense, Amazon said that sellers set their own prices for the products they offer on its platform.
“Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively,” the company said.
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