Senator Questions Two Agencies' Investigations of Big Tech Firms
September 17 2019 - 4:24PM
Dow Jones News
By Brent Kendall
WASHINGTON -- Senators on Tuesday questioned how the Justice
Department and Federal Trade Commission are orchestrating major
antitrust reviews of dominant tech companies, amid evidence that
the two agencies are at odds.
"I have been critical of the fact that we have two federal
agencies responsible for civil antitrust enforcement," Sen. Mike
Lee (R., Utah) told Justice Department antitrust chief Makan
Delrahim and FTC Chairman Joe Simons during an oversight hearing.
"And, I have to say, your two agencies have done a remarkable job
in recent months of making my points."
The Justice Department and FTC share U.S. antitrust authority
and sometimes have to negotiate which agency will handle an
investigation. Both are interested in exploring whether the
nation's most powerful tech companies are unlawfully suppressing
competition.
The two privately have been at loggerheads over investigating
Facebook Inc., The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The FTC is
probing the social media giant on a handful of issues, including
the company's past acquisitions of up-and-coming tech firms. The
Justice Department wants to scrutinize other company practices, and
each agency thinks the other is breaking a jurisdictional
arrangement they reached in July.
Mr. Lee, who heads the Senate antitrust subcommittee that
convened Tuesday's hearing, said splitting a monopolization probe
between two sets of antitrust enforcers made no sense. "Doing so
simply looks like both agencies want to have the same piece of the
same pie at the same time," he said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the panel,
said she was less focused on agency turf battles than on the bigger
picture, "which is how we're going to take on the monopoly issues
of our time." She expressed concern that European enforcers have
long been more active on tech competition issues than the U.S.
Messrs. Simons and Delrahim both acknowledged to the panel that
there have been instances where their negotiating process has
broken down.
The men, under public pressure to take on big tech firms,
earlier this year negotiated arrangements that cleared the Justice
Department to investigate Alphabet Inc.'s Google for possible
monopolistic tactics and also gave the department jurisdiction over
Apple Inc. for similar issues. The FTC secured for itself the right
to explore monopolization questions involving Facebook and
Amazon.com Inc.
Interagency talks over Facebook later became more complicated.
The Justice Department in late July announced it would undertake a
broad review of online platforms including the social media giant,
raising the prospect that both agencies could end up bringing a
case against the same company.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 17, 2019 16:09 ET (20:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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