Biden Calls for Antitrust Laws To Rein in Big Tech

In his first State of the Union address since Republicans took a slim House majority, President Joe Biden called on Congress to take up an issue over which there's growing bipartisan momentum but powerful obstacles that stand in the way: strengthening American antitrust law to crack down on Big Tech's monopoly power. From a report: "Pass the bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage," Biden told lawmakers on Tuesday evening, referring to the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). "Capitalism without competition is not capitalism," he added. "It's extortion. It's exploitation." Biden's renewed push comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last year effectively killed two bipartisan antitrust bills aimed at cracking down on platform monopolies. While saying he supported the measures and promising a vote on them for months, the New York Democrat never brought the package to the floor, even after the White House urged congressional leadership to send the bills to Biden's desk during the lame duck session after the midterm elections. Schumer insisted the bills didn't have the votes needed to pass, contradicting the chief architects of the legislation, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican of Iowa. Grassley told TIME last fall that more than 20 Republicans were prepared to vote for the package.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.