On Wednesday, Amazon filed a petition demanding that Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan recuse herself from any antitrust actions aimed at the t

Amazon Demands FTC Chair Recuse Herself From Investigating Amazon

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2021-06-30 17:30:10

On Wednesday, Amazon filed a petition demanding that Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan recuse herself from any antitrust actions aimed at the tech giant, from investigation to litigation.

Even before Lina Khan's appointment to the position of FTC Chair by President Biden earlier this month, the 32-year-old legal scholar was seen as an influential progressive voice on antitrust with a focus on Big Tech. She was an architect of the U.S. House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee's report on the anticompetitive practices of digital platforms, and in 2017 she wrote a highly influential academic work titled "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox " in the Yale Law Journal.

That article argued that the dominant ideology of antitrust law—that consumer welfare, namely prices, should be the lens through which competition was understood—failed to anticipate the myriad ways in which Amazon in particular acted as a monopoly, leveraging its market power to behave anti-competitively.

Currently, the FTC under Khan is reportedly looking to investigate Amazon’s recent acquisition of MGM and is expected to start a flurry of activity.