President Joe Biden urged Congress to pass measures to strengthen U.S. antitrust law as part of efforts to improve competition in the technology industry, The Verge reported Wednesday.
“Pass bipartisan legislation to strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage,” Biden said Tuesday during his State of the Union address.
Time reported the president’s renewed call comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., decided not to bring two bipartisan antitrust bills — the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act — to a Senate floor vote during the remaining days of last year’s congressional term.
The AICOA measure would prohibit tech companies from giving preference to their own offerings over competing products. OAMA would direct tech companies to provide rival marketplaces access to their app stores.
Schumer, who stated that the measures did not have enough votes to pass, allocated $50 million in additional funding to the Federal Trade Commission and $35 million to the Department of Justice’s antitrust division in the previous fiscal year’s spending legislation, according to the magazine.
