Today, a group of conservative leaders sent a letter to Republican members of Congress urging them to support a package of bipartisan antitrust bills aimed at addressing anticompetitive practices by Big Tech companies.
The letter’s signers are Terry Schilling, president of American Principles Project (APP); Mike Davis, president of the Internet Accountability Project; Ned Ryun, president of American Majority; and Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs for APP.
The letter argues that public sentiment, especially on the Right, is strongly in favor of cracking down on Big Tech. However, given Democrats’ current control of Congress and the White House, working to pass bipartisan antitrust legislation represents likely the only avenue to take any meaningful action against Big Tech before the next presidential election:
Voters are demanding action against Big Tech from Congress. According to Pew Research, 68 percent of Americans believe that “social media companies have too much power and influence in today’s economy.” That number jumps to 80 percent among Americans who identify as conservative. If Republicans want to support this grassroots sentiment and fight Big Tech in a substantive way during the Biden Administration, they must consider an all-of-the-above approach that includes supporting some or even all of these antitrust bills.
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For years, Big Tech companies have engaged in anti-competitive behavior, which has allowed them to amass trillion-dollar valuations, maintain strangleholds on their respective markets, and in the process stifle innovation and distort the larger economy. The House antitrust bills are not perfect. But they represent the only real opportunity in the short term for Congress to do something about Big Tech. There’s a reason that the Big Tech monopolists, and the allied groups they fund in Washington, D.C., are lobbying so aggressively against this specific legislation. They recognize that these bipartisan bills are viable and could pose a real threat to their concentrated power.
We urge you to take advantage of perhaps our only realistic opportunity before 2025 to rein in Big Tech. Please consider supporting these bills.
You can read the full letter here.
