Blumenthal Statement on DC AG Antitrust Suit Against Amazon

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released the statement below in response to an antitrust lawsuit brought against Amazon today by Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine alleging that Amazon has illegally prevented third-party sellers from reducing their prices for products sold on competitor websites.

Two years ago, after Blumenthal pressed Amazon to remove anti-competitive price parity provisions from its contracts with third-party sellers in the United States, Amazon claimed that it would stop enforcing that requirement – only to institute a “fair pricing” policy that similarly restricts competition and raises consumer costs, as outlined in Racine’s suit.

“After I raised concerns about Amazon’s anti-consumer contract clauses two years ago, the company claimed to abandon the abusive policy that forced third-party sellers to raise prices on other platforms and even took a victory lap in the press – and then apparently continued its anti-competitive tactics unabated. I applaud Attorney General Racine for taking strong, decisive legal action today against Amazon’s anti-competitive, anti-consumer tactics and regret that federal regulators failed to act sooner – at great cost to American innovation and consumers,” Blumenthal said. “I call again on DOJ and FTC to aggressively investigate Big Tech’s potential antitrust and competition violations and take necessary enforcement actions to deter other harmful behavior.”

On December 20, 2018, Blumenthal wrote to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to demand an immediate investigation into price parity provisions in Amazon’s contracts. Racine’s complaint cites Blumenthal’s letter, available here.

The full text of Blumenthal’s letter to the FTC is available here and the full text of the letter to DOJ is available here.

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