Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I look forward to responding to my colleague in the future, but I can tell you that people I know around the country want to see their costs go down, and that is exactly what this bill is about. It is about bringing families' costs down, from childcare to taking care of loved ones; seniors; to bring down the cost of prescription drugs--something that has eluded our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, despite a lot of claims that they would do something about it.

So we look forward to debating this bill and getting it done. American Innovation and Choice Online Act

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on behalf of a very important piece of new legislation that is bipartisan.

I introduced this bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, in the last month with Senator Grassley, who was here with us today and will be here shortly; as well as my colleagues Senator Durbin, the chair of the Judiciary Committee; Senator Lindsey Graham, the former chair of the Judiciary Committee; Richard Blumenthal, who is here with us today; Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana; Senator Cory Booker; Senator Josh Hawley; Senator Cynthia Lummis; and Senator Mazie Hirono, who is here with us today; as well as Senator Mark Warner.

America has a major monopoly power problem, and nowhere is this more obvious than with tech. It is because, in part, it is 20 percent of our economy. And while we love the new jobs, the new ideas, the new technology that have come out, we all know that you can't just do nothing on privacy, do nothing on competition, and that our competition laws haven't been updated in any serious way since the invention of the internet.

I am here, again, joined with Senator Grassley. I am going to let him go ahead of me and then turn to Senator Blumenthal and Senator Hirono, and I will finish up because they have been very patient.

I so appreciate Senator Grassley's leadership in this area; one, to make sure the FTC and the Department of Justice Antitrust have the funding they need with the bill that we passed through this Chamber to update merger fees, as well as the work that we are doing right now. It is so important on self-preferencing.

It is this simple: Companies, just because they are dominant platforms, shouldn't be able to put their own stuff in front of everyone else that advertises on our platform. They shouldn't be able to steal ideas and data and develop products off the people who are simply trying to advertise their products on the platform and develop knockoffs, which is exactly what we know, from some really good reporting from the Wall Street Journal and others, has been happening.

And they shouldn't be able to, because they are dominant platforms, tell people who advertise: Hey, if you want to get your stuff near the top of the search engine, then you are going to have to buy a whole bunch of things from us.

That is what reunites us on this bill, the simple concept of competition.

I turn it over to my friend, my neighbor from the State of Iowa, Senator Grassley.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley for his leadership in working with colleagues, and I am glad he mentioned Representatives Cicilline and Buck. They are quite the bipartisan duo. But, then, we worked with them to make some changes to this legislation in order to bring it to our colleagues, and we are very proud of the work we have done. We think it is going to make a big, big difference.

With that, I will turn it over to Senator Hirono.
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague Senator Grassley, the Republican lead on this bill; Senator Blumenthal, who has done so much work in the area of competition and protection of children; and Senator Hirono, who came to the floor today; as well as our original cosponsors of this bill, with many more supporters out there. And that includes Senator Durbin, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee; Senator Lindsey Graham, the former chair; Senator Kennedy; Senator Cory Booker; Senator Josh Hawley, Senator Lummis; and Senator Warner.

So, as we noted, as you heard the speakers today, this is a real- world problem. This isn't something where the tech companies can say ``just trust us, we've got this.''

I think anyone who heard the whistleblower a few weeks back in Commerce knows that is not true; or heard the parent I heard from last week, who told me that, as she tries to protect her kids, as she tries to find the right filter or to get them to stop clicking on a link or doing something that is going to expose them to bad content and bad accounts, she said she feels like it is a faucet that is on and it is overflowing in a sink, and she is trying to mop it up, and then the water just keeps coming out as she goes from kid to kid to kid.

I think that pretty much sums it up for how a lot of parents feel right now.

And the other thing that is going on when you have dominant platforms and you don't have enough competition and you can't get competitors that might have developed the bells and whistles that would have protected us from misinformation and from bad information for our kids--well, that is what happens when you have dominant platforms.

And you know what else happens to you when you go to search for restaurant reviews, you might not be able to see what you really want to see. Instead, you get pushed towards less reputable and less informative reviews; or when you go to try to book a flight, you might be missing out on a better deal because of certain dominant platforms' own booking tool is being pushed to the top of your results. You are basically getting ripped off. That is it, plain and simple.

It also means a dominant platform using nonpublic data--nonpublic data, stuff it gathered from you. And, by the way, one example, Facebook makes $51 a quarter--a quarter--off of every one of the pages that is sitting here in front of us, off of Senator Merkley, who is patiently waiting to speak. Fifty-one dollars a quarter is how much they make because they have got access to all this information, and then the ads get targeted to us. And we don't get any of that money.

Dominant platforms, using nonpublic data that they gather from small businesses can use their platforms--and this is in the retail space; we are talking here, like, Amazon--to build knockoff copies of their products and then compete against the people who we are paying to advertise on their platform.

This isn't your local grocery store chain selling store brand potato chips to compete with a brand-name product. This is Amazon using incredibly detailed, nonpublic information that they get from their sellers on their platform to create copycat products and box out competition from small innovators.

What does it look like?

In one case, an employee of Amazon's private label arm accessed a detailed sales report with 25 columns of information on a car trunk organizer produced by a small Brooklyn company called Fortem. In October 2019, Amazon started selling three trunk organizers of its own. When shown the collection data Amazon had gathered about his brand before launching of their own product, Fortem's cofounder called it a big surprise.

Yeah, I don't think most of us assume that trillion-dollar companies put their troves of data to work boxing small businesses out of the trunk organizer market. But it happened.

That is why we are here supporting the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

Yeah, you have got to update your competition laws when they haven't been changed since the internet was invented.

What does this mean?

Apple won't be able to stifle competition by blocking other companies' services from interoperating with their platform. Amazon won't be able to misuse small businesses' data in order to copy their products. And Google won't be able to bias their platform's search results in favor of other products--their own products.

The result?

A fairer playing field for small and medium businesses, more options, more flexibility, and more access to markets and fostering entrepreneurship for the new kids on the block.

And, by the way, as Senator Grassley outlined, this bill does not outlaw Amazon Prime. Let's go for the lie. It does not do that. That is what they have been saying because they want to stop this in its tracks; or free shipping; or stop Apple from freeloading useful apps onto their iPhones. No, no, no. This is the kind of stuff they have been saying for a while.

And that is why Senator Grassley and I spent the entire summer working on this bill, to make sure it did none of that. That is why we have such broad support, because this is targeted at anti-competitive conduct.

We are really excited about this bill. The positive opinions it has been getting--Boston Globe, Washington Post: ``Finally a promising piece of tech antitrust legislation in Congress.''

I think there are other ones, but that is what they said in there.

So commonsense rules of the road for major digital platforms, allowing them to continue to operate their businesses. We are glad for these products. We like these products. We want to keep these companies strong. But they don't need to engage in this kind of behavior. That is why we are here today, and we are looking very forward to getting this bill before the Judiciary Committee and passed through the Senate.

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