The FTC vs. Amazon / The House Shutdown Fiasco

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4.2 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan sues Amazon for "monopolistic practices," but is the online retailer actually a monopoly, given its competition from brick-and-mortar stores, and is its behavior anticompetitive in a way that harms consumers? Plus, the House fails to pass a stopgap funding bill, setting up a possible government shutdown, as the Biden Administration prepares to close national parks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get a better grip on the markets.
0:02.7	WSJ's Take on the Week is here to give you a look ahead to the most important events
0:07.8	on the economic and business calendar and what they mean for your money and investments.
0:13.1	Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:30.5	As the US barrels toward a potential government shutdown this weekend.
0:34.8	Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.
0:37.8	We are joined today by my colleagues columnist Alicia Finley and Kim Strassel.
0:44.0	The chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan, has had her eyes on Amazon since
0:49.0	at least 2017 when she was a student at Yale Law School and wrote an influential paper,
0:54.7	Amazon's anti-trust paradox.
0:57.3	But now in power and in government, she has overseen a case being brought against the online
1:02.5	retailer and here she is explaining what she's intending to do this week.
1:06.5	So this lawsuit is fundamentally about protecting free and fair competition and the US
1:12.5	anti-trust laws prohibit firms from using their monopoly power to punish or preclude or prevent
1:18.8	competition and that's what our lawsuit lays out that Amazon has done.
1:23.2	The consequences of that are very serious for sellers who now pay one out of every two
1:28.9	dollars to Amazon. So this is effectively a 50 percent tax that businesses pay to Amazon to
1:34.4	reach shoppers and that in turn inflates prices for consumers and it inflates prices for consumers
1:41.1	not just on Amazon's own site but actually across the internet.
1:44.5	Alicia, this is a 170-some page lawsuit.
1:48.1	Can you give us a sense of what the argument is that the FTC is making with regard to Amazon's
1:54.0	conduct and what exactly is Lena Khan asking for in court?
	...

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