American Innovation and Choice Online Act would help level the playing field for small businesses

LEGISLATION

With Congress back in session, the race is on to finalize last-minute legislation before the election. Unfortunately, one piece of critical, bipartisan legislation remains unfinished and may stay that way unless Senators Hassan and Shaheen step forward — that is, new antitrust protections for small businesses and consumers against big tech companies.

As we all know, only a handful of technology companies, such as Google and Amazon, dominate the internet. This dominance has been shown to be used by these companies to engage in unfair and anticompetitive activities.

The results for small businesses and consumers have been bad. The line between paid products and organic search in Google continues to be blurred. An investigation by The Wall Street Journal found Amazon has hurt small businesses with practices such as using private seller data to offer its own competing products. This is on top of other significant complaints the National Federation of Independent Business has received from small businesses who report unfairness in how their products are placed and listed on the platform.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act seeks to set some basic rules of the road to ensure that these tech giants can’t do things like unfairly preference their own products over a small business’s or unfairly choke off competition that consumers and small businesses desire. This is just common sense, and 84 percent of NFIB small business owners have indicated they support it.

The bill is spearheaded by a progressive, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and a conservative, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and has the support of everyone from Democrats like Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Dick Durbin of Illinois to Republicans like Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri. It was reported to the Senate floor by an overwhelming vote of 16-6. Unfor tunately, the legislation has languished for months. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has indicated he’s waiting on senators, like New Hampshire’s Hassan and Shaheen, to indicate their support.

If the bill dies, it will be a big win for big tech companies, who have reportedly spent $120 million to defeat the bill, and a serious loss for actual small business owners and consumers. For that reason, small business owners are asking Senators Hassan and Shaheen to step up and say if they support small businesses and consumers or out-of-state big tech companies.

Bruce Berke is state director of the National Federation of Independent Business in New Hampshire.