American businesses are being besieged by federal, state, and foreign far-Left antitrust ideologues.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are reportedly preparing to re-introduce the twice-failed American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). And in California, state Sen. Scott Wiener just introduced the Blocking Anticompetitive Self-Preferencing by Entrenched Dominant Platforms (BASED) Act, a copy-and-paste of the same legislation.
Together, they represent the latest front in an ideological antitrust crusade that has already been rejected. If implemented, these bills would impose sweeping, overreaching restrictions on American technology companies and the millions of small businesses that depend on them.
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Rather than reflecting American principles of free enterprise and merit-based competition, the intrusive regulatory proposals are direct imports of the European Union’s (EU) Digital Markets Act (DMA), a Brussels-designed regulatory framework of which five of seven named “gatekeepers” are American companies. Under the DMA, the EU has already levied fines of €500 million against Apple and €200 million against Meta.
The Trump administration has appropriately fought back against this discriminatory foreign regulation. Obviously, it would be counterproductive and self-destructive for U.S. lawmakers to mirror this costly mess by advancing domestic copycats.
AICOA and BASED Act proponents contend America’s small businesses are being strangled by large American tech companies. Small business owners report the opposite.
According to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s new report on the digital state of small businesses, 74% of small business owners say digital platforms make it easier to compete with larger firms. About 93% of small businesses use multiple channels to drive sales, and 47% plan to add more channels in the year ahead. This is not a story of small businesses being trapped by big businesses. In fact, small business owners say their own company website is their primary channel, with social media platforms, their own storefronts, in-person events, various apps, and a range of e-commerce platforms all complementing and supporting their sales efforts.
Large-scale platforms give small businesses access to logistics, advertising infrastructure, and customer reach that was once exclusive to major brands. Among small businesses selling on Amazon specifically, 98% say the platform’s pricing structure is fair and allows them to compete, and 94% say Amazon provides meaningful platform support for small businesses. Moreover, 87% of small businesses report their margins are either higher (64%) or about the same (23%) on Amazon compared to other sales channels.
The picture is similarly clear on social media platforms. More than 60% of small businesses identified Facebook as their most important tech platform for income and brand building, and Instagram followed at 43%. The report also noted that TikTok, which is rapidly being adopted by small businesses, is the top channel of 26% of small businesses — 91% of those users call the platform important to their business viability. These tech platforms aren’t creating victims; they’re creating opportunity.
AICOA and the BASED Act are not pro-competition. They embrace anti-success policies designed to penalize companies for building platforms so useful that small businesses and consumers choose them freely. Breaking up or heavily constraining these platforms won’t liberate small businesses. It will raise their costs, reduce their reach and revenues, and eliminate the tools they’ve come to depend on for productivity and growth.
Reintroducing AICOA, or skirting around Congress by duplicating it in California, is an attempt to resurrect a philosophy that the market, the judiciary, and the American public have already rebuffed.
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AICOA, along with its newly born state counterpart, must stay buried. The future of American technology companies competing globally, and the tens of millions of small businesses and consumers who depend on them, requires nothing less.
Policymakers who genuinely want to support small businesses should understand what is actually happening in the marketplace and trust what small business owners are actually saying and experiencing. The digital marketplace is working. Innovation and adoption, not radical intervention, will continue to power American entrepreneurship and economic growth.
Karen Kerrigan is President of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBEC).