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Amazon: such problems Premium
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YESTERDAY
Before the election, Donald Trump said that Jeff Bezos would have “such problems” when he was in the White House, owing to Amazon’s “huge antitrust” issues. Now Mr Trump is in power and the Amazon chief executive is putting him to the test, with the proposed acquisition of Whole Foods, the grocery chain. The stock market, however, which has come to discount the president’s words, reacted as if the $14bn deal is done. Rival supermarket groups suffered sell-offs on Friday; Amazon’s shares rose.
It is, in fact, unlikely to cause alarm in the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission — only partly because Mr Trump’s minimalist approach to government has left the agencies under-staffed. It is mainly because the deal presents no glaring competition concerns. Amazon is a minnow in grocery, with a 0.2 per cent share for its existing Fresh delivery service, while Whole Foods is the 10th biggest in the US with 1.2 per cent, according to GlobalData Retail estimates.
In fact, for Mr Bezos, the antitrust laws are his friend. He benefited in 2013 when a US court ruled that Apple and the top five US publishers had conspired over ebook prices to the detriment of Amazon and the consumer. If it were to bid, Walmart, with 15 per cent of the market, might encounter more trouble.
This is increasingly hard to swallow. Amazon does not feel like a minnow, not to all the bricks-and-mortar retailers who have been crushed by its fearsome price-cutting and logistics prowess, starting in books and expanding inexorably to other goods and services.
Yet when Whole Foods itself drew antitrust action 10 years ago with its acquisition of Wild Oats, a rival chain, the FTC argued it would mean “higher prices, reduced quality, and fewer choices for consumers”. Only the latter argument can be levelled credibly at Amazon.
Lina Khan, a fellow at New America, a think-tank, argued in January in the Yale Law Journal, that current antitrust policy focuses too heavily on short-term harm to consumers’ wallets and misses the long-term dominance that internet platforms can gain with ultra-low prices.
The law allows for a different approach and eventually Amazon will be big enough to prompt Washington into action. It is ironic that despite his direct threat, it might not come from Mr Trump’s administration.
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