Study: Antitrust legislation could cost US economy $319 billion | National

(The Center Square) – Legislative proposals in Congress that would strengthen antitrust enforcement could cost the US economy more than $319 billion if enacted, according to a recent economic study.

the learn was conducted by the National Economic Research Associates (NERA), an economic consulting firm, and commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a free enterprise trade organization. It is one of the first comprehensive studies to examine the effects of the drug therapy developed by US Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and US Rep. David Cicilline, DR.I.

Cicilline and Klobuchar were introduced last year p. 225also known as the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Act, which aims to overhaul the country’s antitrust laws.

The bill would increase enforcement resources for regulators, strengthen laws that ban certain mergers and acquisitions, and ban “exclusive behavior,” which lawmakers have accused companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon of doing.

Klobuchar said last year that the bills are designed to address the “massive competition problem” of the US economy.

According to the NERA study, the bills could have a massive impact on consumers, especially those who prefer to shop using e-commerce platforms.

“These bills purportedly only target large US tech companies, but in reality would have economic implications for small businesses and everyday products and services that US consumers value,” says Dr. Christian Dippon, an economist at NERA and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement.

The bills could force companies to scale back services like Amazon Prime, which could have an overall impact of $22 billion on consumers, or $148 per Amazon Prime member, according to the study.

Dippon also said the bills would “further discourage the growth of US startups and threaten the international competitiveness of US firms” by prohibiting companies of a certain size from acquiring startups.

Trevor Wagener, CCIA’s director of research and economics, said the bills would only serve to kick American consumers while inflation keeps them down.

“American consumers are already reeling from the highest inflation in four decades,” Wagener said in a statement. “Additionally, rising operating costs for US companies would be counterproductive in the fight against inflation, the administration’s top domestic policy priority.”