The move is rising against large technology firms, which dominate key economic sectors and are seeing their impact grow during the epidemic.
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A new coalition of small business groups on Tuesday launched a campaign for anti-American antitrust enforcement, most notably for the breakup of online commerce titan Amazon.
The Small Business Rising Group includes the American Booksellers Association, the National Grocers Association, and several local and regional trade organizations.
The coalition website said it aimed to “stop tech monopoly like Amazon, break down and regulate them by closing the online marketplace.”
The move is rising against large technology firms that dominate key economic sectors and sees their influence growing during the epidemic.
The new small business group said it supported the findings of a recent US congressional report that highlighted the power of technology platforms and called for strict antitrust enforcement and new legislation to make it easier to eliminate some firms Gone.
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“By restoring competitive markets, we can unlock the ability of Americans to develop successful businesses and make them more prosperous, equitable and innovative,” the group said.
It is specifically named Amazon, the company’s “Struggle on Online Commerce” as one of the top threats facing independent businesses.
The group said the congressional investigation found that “Amazon has exploited its gatekeeper power over online shopping traffic by imposing excessive shopping fees, demanding tortuous terms, and extracting valuable data from independent manufacturers and retailers that use its platform Depend on. “
Amazon superseded the claim that it is a competition, arguing in a statement that “self-serving critics are pursuing misguided interventions in the free market that would kill independent retailers and punish consumers” do.”
A statement from the company stated that “Amazon empowered small and medium-sized businesses to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in sales last year, and their sales were growing significantly faster than Amazon’s first-party sales is.”
‘No Level Playground’
Danny Caine, owner of the independent Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, said that Amazon is “writing the rules of the game, and they’re playing the game at the same time.”
Caine supports President Joe Biden’s administration’s move to rein in the Tech Titans, and hopes the legislation could gain bipartisan support.
“Like it, neither party particularly loves the big tech monopoly. And so I see an opportunity there,” Cane told AFP.
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According to Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, five years ago Amazon was taking an average of 19 percent of sellers’ revenue – an amount that has now risen to about 30 percent.
“This is a very large increase in the small margin world of retail,” Mitchell said.
According to the group’s data, most sellers cannot make enough profit to stay on Amazon for more than five years.
Since a large amount of online shopping traffic starts on the Amazon, they “meet to pick winners and losers,” she said.
“So it is really important that we have regulations that require that e-commerce platforms be neutral and deal fairly with many businesses that depend on that infrastructure.”
Gina Shaffer, who owns 13 hardware stores in the Washington DC area, is upset that it is “not a level playing field” when it comes to online shopping.
“Amazon has been allowed to grow stronger and stronger over the last two decades, which began with the tax breaks given to them,” he told AFP.
Amazon has access to “insane amounts of data”.
She fears that by disrupting government regulations, Amazon may gain strength “because they have no competition” and access to “unlimited resources”.
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