Lobbying against the plan swamps support

The largest U.S. technology companies continued to spend millions on lobbying last quarter, seeking to sway legislation intended to bolster antitrust enforcement and force other changes on the industry. Apple Inc. increased its spending to $1.64 million in the second quarter, up 12.3% from the previous quarter. Amazon Inc.’s total increased by 1.3% to $4.86 million. Lobbying expenditures by Microsoft Corp. dipped slightly, down 4.6% to $2.47 million and Facebook Inc. mostly held steady at $4.77 million. Alphabet Inc.’s Google spent $2.09 million, down 22.3% from last quarter, but up 23.7% from last year. While the numbers show a mixed trend, the sustained level of spending on government influence demonstrates what the technology industry has at stake as policy makers debate stronger antitrust enforcement and tougher regulations on a sector that for the most part has been allowed to develop organically. Now, these entrenched companies have surpassed $1 trillion, and in some cases $2 trillion, in market valuation and are using their abundant resources to protect their positions. Most of the companies disclosed dozens of bills and issues that their lobbyists are tracking, grouped into broad categories like taxes, consumers, homeland security and banking. The lobbying reports, required by law, were due Tuesday. A common concern was antitrust. Forcing more competition in the online economy is one of few issues that has bridged partisan divides in Congress, and received the full support of the Biden administration. Antitrust advocates on Tuesday cheered the nomination of Google foe Jonathan Kanter to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division. He joins Lina Khan, a fierce critic of the technology giants who heads the Federal Trade Commission, and Tim Wu, a leader of the new anti-monopolist movement, as a top White House adviser. A bill to give the Justice Department and the FTC more resources to pursue competition cases passed the Senate and a similar measure received bipartisan support in the House. Five other antitrust measures got votes from Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, including proposals focused on a handful of U.S. tech companies to make mergers more difficult, force platforms to allow consumers to move their data, change how companies present their own services to consumers or force them to divest entirely of certain lines of business. Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all listed these House proposals as targets of their lobbying campaign last quarter, trying to convince lawmakers that this legislation would destroy popular products, endanger user safety and benefit foreign competitors. There is some evidence that these arguments resonated, as it’s unclear whether the bills would have enough support to pass the full House, and no floor vote has been scheduled.