DC Cleaning Amazon’s Clock In Antitrust Pipe Dream?

Leave it to DC’s AG to diss antitrust lawyers at DOJ & FTC by filing his own antitrust suit against Amazon for alleged price-fixing when those real experts saw no there there case. As the WSJ tells it, DC’s Karl Racine thinks Amazon’s contract with its online sellers somehow “prevent [those] sellers from offering lower prices on any other website, including their own.”

Huh? As Amazon tried to explain, “sellers on [our] site set their own prices…[but] like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively.” In other words, Amazon said, “The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law.”

Odd indeed. Having covering the antitrust beat for the top national legal trade newspaper, I can tell you those fed lawyers know the law. If they say there’s no “monopolistic” behavior by a company, or at least, it ain’t worth spending millions of taxpayers’ money on a 5-year court battle they’ll likely lose, I’d say you’d best listen before going solo like DC’s AG. BTW: I just got a pipe cleaner from Amazon that’s 50% cheaper than the same pipe cleaner I would have gotten at a DC tobacco store trying to clean up on me.

Davd Soul