If a business is successful enough, it will inevitably be accused of breaking every rule under the sun. For the past few decades, American regulators wisely broke with their European counterparts and gave innovators the benefit of the doubt. This is unfortunately no longer so.
Dubious antitrust actions, which surged under the disastrous tenure of Biden-era Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, have continued into the second Trump presidency. President Trump has rightly rebuked Europe’s attempt to strangle U.S. tech through excessive regulation. However, current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who promised to steer away from European-style rules and end the “war on business,” has done the opposite and mimicked European regulators. The FTC should embrace the American entrepreneurial spirit and give businesses and consumers a well-deserved break from red tape.
Amazon is Exhibit A of the federal government’s continued war on business. The U.S. continues to claim Amazon—a supposed “monopoly”—is rigging its marketplace to exert upward price pressure on sellers and consumers by extension. Interestingly, regulators on the other side of the Atlantic are making the opposite (but similarly loony) case: Amazon is forcing lower prices on shoppers.
In a case that’s already in its third year, the FTC and a host of state attorneys general claim that Amazon sellers and consumers are victims of an insidious scheme maintained by Amazon. According to the government, Amazon is “constantly monitor[ing] the internet, searching for discounts that might threaten Amazon’s empire. When Amazon detects elsewhere online a product that is cheaper than a seller’s offer for the same product on Amazon, Amazon punishes that seller.” Never mind that the vast majority of Amazon sellers make a tidy profit on their listings while delivering low prices to consumers. U.S. regulators care more about bizarre conspiracizing than what actually benefits American families.
Ditto with their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic. Recently, the Bundeskartellamt, or the Federal Cartel Office of Germany, claimed that, “Amazon uses various price control mechanisms to review the prices of Marketplace sellers. If these mechanisms determine that the sellers’ prices are too high, the offers in question are either altogether removed from the Marketplace or not displayed in the prominently placed Buy Box.”
While the specific theories alleged by American and German regulators contradict one another, they rely on the same anti-business instincts and “Mother, may I?” approach to markets. This approach falls squarely into the European school of big government, and the results speak for themselves. As Tufts University scholar Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur notes, from 2008-2023, “EU GDP [Gross Domestic Product] grew by 13.5% (from $16.37 trillion to $18.59 trillion) while U.S. GDP rose by 87% (from $14.77 to $27.72 trillion). The UK’s GDP increased by 15.4%. In 2023, EU GDP was 67% of U.S. GDP — down from 110% in 2008. Accounting for population, EU GDP per capita as a percentage of U.S. GDP per capita fell from 76.5% in 2008 to 50% in 2023.” Meanwhile, the U.S. developed a burgeoning tech sector, while Europe has no significant tech companies to speak of.
Factors like onerous antitrust enforcement, rigid labor laws, and the introduction of sweeping and nonsensical laws like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act make it effectively impossible to innovate in Europe. President Trump acknowledged this European problem when he posted on Truth Social that, “I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology.”
The stark disparity between the U.S. and Europe could not be clearer. Yet, U.S. regulatory agencies like the FTC are determined to veer away from President Trump, cosplay as the Bundeskartellamt, and make innovators’ lives needlessly difficult. Meanwhile, lawmakers are pushing for laws such as the American Innovation and Choice Online Act that would import heavy-handed European regulations into the U.S.
The truth is that Amazon is just one seller and sales platform among many. Consumers very often save money by going on Amazon, and sellers make plenty of money and drive Amazon’s sales. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic ought to celebrate companies like Amazon and remove barriers to serving consumers. The opposite approach has not worked in Europe, and it certainly won’t work in the U.S.
