Amazon marches towards monopoly by singing tune of antitrust

Amazons business strategies and current market dominance pose anti-competitive concerns that the consumer welfare framework in antitrust fails to recognise, wrote Lina Khan in the Yale Law School Journal. She is now the chairperson of the US Federal Trade Commission.

“By this measure, Amazon has excelled; it has evaded government scrutiny in part through fervently devoting its business strategy and rhetoric to reducing prices for consumers. Amazon’s closest encounter with antitrust authorities was when the Justice Department sued other companies for teaming up against Amazon,” the article said.

“It is as if Bezos charted the company’s growth by first drawing a map of antitrust laws, and then devising routes to smoothly bypass them.