Amazon is now facing threats from competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
This week the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is preparing a lawsuit that “could challenge an array of Amazon’s business practices as anticompetitive”, according to the WSJ.
The report noted that the FTC has been scrutinizing several Amazon practices in recent years, including whether the company favors its own products over competitors’ on its platforms, as well as how Amazon treats outside sellers in general.
The commission has also been looking at the company’s Amazon Prime subscription service bundling practices, the WSJ said. However, exactly which aspects of the business the FTC would target was not known, and both Amazon and the government declined to comment.
A stateside follow-on to an EU settlement
News of the FTC’s potential lawsuit comes just two months after Amazon settled two major antitrust cases in the European Union. The European cases involved accusations similar to the likely charges about to be leveled against Amazon in the US. EU regulators, like the FTC, focused on Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers, as well as how the company used its Prime subscription service in a discriminatory fashion.
Indeed, Amazon has been battered by complaints from European regulators in such countries as Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Amazon settled the EU antitrust cases last December. As part of its agreement with European regulators, the tech giant pledged not to use nonpublic data about third-party sellers’ merchandise to benefit its competing products.
In the US, it may be personal
Amazon has protested the actions of the FTC due to what they perceive as a bias on the part of the head of the commission. Before Lina Khan became Chair of the FTC, she had “built her career” on arguing that Amazon had amassed too much market power and that antitrust law had failed to restrain it. Amazon filed a petition with the commission that argued she should be recused due to her extensive past criticisms of Amazon.
The commission is unlikely to comply with Amazon’s request, according to the WSJ.
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