A recent blog post by Aurelien Portuese, director of antitrust and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) focuses on some of the setbacks the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) poses for American consumers and businesses. 

The bill is set to be considered by the Senate Judiciary later this week and has many important figures in the country worrying about the outcome. In short, the bill will make it illegal for big corporations to “push their own products and services over those of competitors.”

Portuese analysis suggests that the bill could seriously hurt American consumers since it disincentives innovation from highly recognized companies due to the costly obligations that these platforms will pass on their customers.

Some of the consequences of passing this bill may include:

• A ban for all businesses from promoting their own products on their own platforms, such as Amazon Basics on Amazon. Although other foreign companies, such as China’s Alibaba, could very well take the market lead with their own labels.

• Google would be prevented from suggesting Google Maps, Gmail, or other similar products while using their search engine.
• Facebook could no longer promote any of its products, but any competitor would be able to promote similar products on their platform.

It is time for our country’s legislators to take our nation’s side and seriously analyze the consequences of passing a bill like this, which would only bring harm to our own companies and citizens while giving a  great advantage to foreign firms. The law should not be used to put a stop to American innovation.

The AICOA is primarily targeting some big US tech companies, which also gives great regulatory advantages to international competitors, such as China’s TikTok and Tencent. Some of the neutrality obligations included in AICOA will intervene and regulate US companies, therefore AICOA will ban companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple from launching new products and services, allowing foreign businesses to fill in the gap, driving the US market to use and depend on organizations that are not based in the US.