The subcommittee will come to order. I again want to apologize to our witnesses. This is historic action on the house floor that has taken a number of Committee Members away from the committee. But i would like to get started. Our second panel of witnesses, the first witness on our second panel is timothy wu, the julius silver professor of law at columbia law school, an expert on antitrust, copyright and Communications Law and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, including the master switch in the curse of bigness. Professor wu has twice been part of the politico list of 50 individuals transforming american politics and was named to the American Academy of arts and sciences in 2017. He received his bachelors of science from mcgill university. Fiona scott morton, a professor at the University School of management. Nationally recognized as a leading scholar and published articles in leading economic journals. From 2011 to 2012 she served as Deputy Assistant attorney general at the United States department of justice where she helped enforce the nations antitrust laws. The third witness on our panel is stacy mitchell, codirector of the institute for local self reliance. She spent years working with policymakers and grassroots organizations to help develop city, state, and federal policies to strengthen independent business and curb corporate power. Ms. Mitchell has appeared in publications like the nation, the atlantic, and the wall street journal and her works have had a significant influence around discussions around corporate consolidation. Her paper, antitrust, earned her recognition in 2017 as part of the jerry s. Cohen award for antitrust scholarship. She serves on the board of the maine center for economic policy. Our fourth witness is maureen ohlhausen, a partner at baker botts llp. She led the federal trade commission as acting commissioner. She directed all aspects of their antitrust work. Shes published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, ip, regulation, telecommunications and International Law issues. She has particular expertise on privacy issues. She has received numerous awards for her work and scholarship. She received her ba from the university of virginia. Todays fifth witness is carl sa szabo. He worked as an intellectual property attorney. Mr. Szabo has expensive experience in taxation, privacy, copyright and trademark law. He worked at the ftc where he helped create and implement their Consumer Information security outreach plan. He is also an adjunct professor of privacy law at the Antonin Scalia law school. Our last witness is morgan reed, executive director of the App Association. He specializes in issues involving intellectual property competition and innovation. Prior to joining the App Association he served as managing director of north american sales for a taiwanbased company. Recent mr. Reed has focused on developing an innovators network, and organizing a team of officials focused on the importance of ip law. Mr. Reed received his ba and graduate degree at Arizona State university and attend the university of utah and National Taiwan university. We welcome all of our distinguished witnesses on the second panel. Thank you for participating in todays hearing. If you would rise, ill begin by swearing you in. Please raise your hand. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony youre about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you god . Let the record show the witnesses answered in the affirmative. Thank you, you may be seated. Each of your written statements will be entered into the written record in its entirety. I ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. When the light turns green to yellow, you have one minute to conclude your testimony. When the light turns red it signals your five minutes has spider. Well begin, mr. Wu, with you. You have five minutes. Thank you, chairman and other members of the committee. It is a great pleasure to be here today. Im very grateful that the subcommittee is conducting this work and these investigations. I believe this is one of the most important Economic Issues facing our country. I think we face a vitally important question, which is this whether the United States will remain the place that new industries start, the place where startups get their start. The place where inventors think they have a chance to challenge the dominant firms of their day, where innovation flourishes, where really the United States is capable of being the place, as ive said before, that new industries are started. And i think that is something that has come into question. I think that we face across the economy an overconsolidation, an overconcentration in many industries. I think this is particularly evident and in fact extreme in the tech industries. So over the last two hours of the first panel, we listened to something that to me could have been a hearing in the year 2005 or maybe almost like a fantasy zone. If were to believe what the testifiers were saying, and they were under oath, we live in a time of incredibly fierce competition. I could leave this hearing, go to my garage and start a challenger to google, facebook, and amazon. There are no barriers to competition. Every competition is only one click away. I think that Everybody Knows thats not true. There is no mystery anymore about whether the tech markets have flipped. Theres no question as to whether there are barriers to entry and whether the tech economies have in fact become a very difficult place for people to get started. People are starting to talk about the decline in the number of startups. Almost unthinkable in the United States, which has always had a comparative advantage in being the place where startups will get their start. So i think it is time for the reassertion of what i think have been incredible successful policies from the last century, namely the antitrust laws and procompetitive regulation on the model of the telecom laws and some of the ftc regulations. We have a trilogy of cases in the tech space in particular. Ibm, at t, and microsoft, which were big section 2 cases, which were citriticized at the time o being certain to interfere with competition and hurt American Companies at a time when japan seemed very threatening. In retrospect, when you look back at the effects of these big cases, they loosened up the tech markets. They helped contribute to an enormous boom in the tech and Telecom Markets that has lasted more than 30 years and has restored the United States to a place of Global Leadership in the tech market. So i think that that trilogy, and some of the most important procompetitive regulation at the fcc and ftc, is the policy we need at this time and not a policy of trying to endorse or support national champions. If i have time in questions, ill address some of the things said earlier, but i want to address one or two right now. In the testimony we heard earlier, efri think its very notable that facebook had trouble naming competitors. They were repeatedly asked. They couldnt name any competitors. Theres a very simple reason for that. They bought their competitors. They bought the most threatening companies to them. That is the reason its so hard for them to name them. They could have said instagram and whatsapp, but they own them. Facebook also said its intent when it bought these companies was perfectly benign. It saw them as promising companies, wanted to incubate them. I suggest that this subcommittee look into an email written by Mark Zuckerberg around the time of the instagram acquisition, where he stated, as has been reported in the press, that the purpose of this, and this is paraphrasing, was to eliminate a dangerous potential nascent competitor. You have subpoena power, if im not mistaken, and it might not be a bad idea to get your hands on that letter. Ill speak in my last 20 seconds about amazon and their testimony. Amazon swore up and down theres nothing funny about their searches or algorithms, they would never favor their own products over another. I think there needs to be serious scrutiny of the amazon search engine. The ftc in 2001 issued a ruling suggesting or a letter saying that search should be what consumers expect. And i think we have underenforcement of the questions as to whether searches are deceptive. And im over my time but i will suggest that in each of these comments, there were statements that were really not reflective of the competition, conditions of competition in this country and the conditions of innovation. Im so glad the subcommittee is taking the time to look at these issues. Thank you, professor. I assure you the committee is not bound by the characterizations of the witnesses about the nature of the markets or the lack of competition. Thats the purpose of the investigation. Well take you up on your suggestions. Next i recognize dr. Fiona scott morton for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you, chairmanci ciecillin for the invitation to testify today. From an economists perspective, there were a number of concerns that they failed to mention. Digital platforms provide tremendous benefits yet also created problems such as insufficient competition. And that leads to too little innovation and entrepreneurship. I urge you as a committee to use this investigation to identify what types of antitrust enhancements and regulatory tools are needed to jumpstart competition in this sector and protect it Going Forward to the benefit both of consumers and Small Businesses. As is detailed in the report that i submitted as my testimony, there are a number of characteristics of platforms that tend to drive them toward concentrated markets, very large economies of scale. Consumers exacerbate this with their behavioral biases. What that does is it makes it very hard for Small Companies to grow and for new ones to get traction against a dominant plat for me. Without the threat of entry from entrepreneurs and growth from existing competitors, the dominant plat for me doesnt have to compete as hard. If its not competing as hard, there are several harms that follow from that. One is, many of these platforms are advertising supported. Then consumers may think theyre getting a good deal by paying a price of zero but the Competitive Price might well be negative, consumers might well be able to be paid for using these platforms in a competitive market. Other harms include low quality in the form of less privacy, more advertising, and more exploitative content that consumers cant avoid because as tim just said, there isnt anywhere else to go. Lastly, without competitive pressure, innovation is lessened and in particular its channeled in the direction of dominant firm prefers rather than being creatively spread across directions drawn by entrants. This is what we learned from at t and ibm and microsoft. When the dominant firm ceases to control innovation theres a flowering and its very creative and marketdriven. The solution to this problem of insufficient competition is complementary steps forward in both antitrust and regulation. Antitrust must recalibrate the balance it strikes between the risk of overenforcement and underenforcement. The evidence now shows hes been underenforcing for years and consumers have been harmed. We have advances in both the theory and empirical tools that demonstrate how we can better identify those harms and measure them. Digital platforms in particular do raise a number of practical enforcement challenges, for example measuring quality adjusted prices. Thats hard. But congress could enable the agencies to bring these cases nonetheless by articulating through statute the risks that congress once courts to weigh and the evidence they should accept. For example, if a dominant platform wants to require a nascent entrant when theres uncertainty over how close a competitor that entrant is going to become in the future, how should courts treat that unserpenun serpe certainty . Today that uncertainty defaults to, buy anybody small that you want. Congress could change that to, you only get to buy the nascent entrant if the come to nats firm proves to the court that the acquisition will benefit consumers. And only in that case can the merger occur. So the defaults we use in court really matter. And congress can write laws that change those defaults. Congress can bring it more in line by shifting burdens of proof to defendants in certain settings. That would likely increase accuracy because the dominant or acquiring firm has an understanding of the Business Model needed to assess the impact of conduct or merger. Lastly, congress could give a regulator tools that allow it to move quickly, something litigation typically doesnt do. For example, a regulator could oversee a requirement that platforms dont harmfully discriminate between their own services and those of rivals. If an agency established a violation of the antitrust laws and determined that the best method of restoring competition was, for example, lander to interoperability between the dominant firm and small entrants, a regulator could oversee and monitor that interoperability and make sure it happened. Others might be data sharing, or data porting from one service to another. A regulator could also establish baseline conditions for competition so that entrepreneurs can enter an open Playing Field. In conclusion, strengthening both antitrust enforcement and regulate over the of digital platforms is negative in my vce view so that it serves the american people. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Scott morton. And now the chair recognizes ms. Mitchell for five minutes. Thank you, chairman cicilline and members of the committee. I really appreciate this opportunity to participate in this hearing and this historically important investigation. Americas independent businesses are in trouble. They are declining rapidly across many sectors of the economy. And its not because they cant compete. On the contrary, Research Shows that in many sectors they actually outperform their rivals on many measures including price. Whether the evidence suggests that the problem can be traced to changes in policy, and particularly our antitrust enforcement that have allowed a few dominant corporations to consolidate markets and given them free rein to hobble their smaller competitors. This is magnified in our Digital Markets. A handful of dominant players now act as gatekeepers. Amazon in particular. Last year amazon captured about 1 of every 2 that americans spend online. The more consequential measure of its Marketing Power is half of all Online Shopping searches start on amazons platform. What this means is that for virtually every company in the economy that either makes or retails anything, increasingly to reef the Online Market you have little choice but to sell through a platform thats run by your most aggressive competitor. This is a bitter pill. Becoming a seller on amazons platform means forfeiting to amazon your product knowledge, a trove of data about your transactions. It means giving amazon a sizable cut of your revenue. And it means entering a relationship that is often predatory. Studies show amazon learns from the retailers on its platform and starts selling their most popular items itself. It has capsized businesses overnight by changing its terms, gating products so they cant sell them suddenly, or simply canceling their accounts without explanation. In the absence of competing platforms, theres no downward pressure on the fees that amazon can charge sellers. And indeed these fees now constitute a sizable tax on its competitors trade. And although amazon didnt address this directly today, it is true that in order to rank high and have a better chance of winning the buy box, you need to use its fulfillment services. And those fees have increased by double digits for the last few years. Amazon is many things. Its a platform, its a retailer, its a manufacturer, its a digital ad giant and so much more. I think key to understanding its market power is its able to leverage the interplay between these different business lines to extort value from its competitors. An executive at a large wellknown performance footwear brand that sells to amazon told me that as long as his company sold to amazon on their terms, they would help him police the counterfeiters and the other nefarious sellers on the platform. But the moment that they pushed back, that they didnt agree to that next big discount or the change in terms, amazons site became a wild west of sellers misrepresenting his brand, many overseas and unreachable. He said, quote, they use this as a punitive measure. They can sink companies without anyone to answer to. Increasingly, our commerce is occurring not in a market but in a private arena governed by amazon, where it has the power to regulate, tax, and punish americas entrepreneurs. And the consequences of this are being felt around the country. There are few metros that are doing well, most places are not. Local businesses are disappearing. And with them a pathway to the middle class. Producers are struggling to invest in new products and grow their companies. New business formation is down to historic lows. And for many americans, including those who walked out of an Amazon Warehouse this week, work has become increasinglymroi supply exploitative. The issue is the power and the policies that enable that contention of power. In fact the urgent risk we face if we do not act is that entrey preurialism and innovation will become increasingly stifled. We very much endorse the approach that Congress Took with regard to the railroads. If you operate an essential infrastructure, you cant also compete with the businesses that rely on that infrastructure. We also need nondiscrimination rules for platforms, stronger enforcement against anticompetitive conduct, and changes to merger policy, particularly in light of the pivotal acquisitions that amazon and other tech giants have made that have flown under the enforcement agencys radar. Thank you very much. Thank you, ms. Mitchell. The chair now recognizes mountain ohlhausen for five minutes. My thanks to chairman cicilline and members of the committee for inviting me to testify. As former acting commissioner of the federal trade commission and long time antitrust practitioner, i hope to offer some perspectives to assist the committee. In reaction to todays technologydriven technology, theres a perception in some quarte quarters. Im concerned about reducing the focus on consumer welfare. Believing that consumer welfare is the appropriate goal does not mean being passive or embracing the view that antitrust cannot improve its tools to detect anticompetitive behavior. If those tools suggest that competition will be harmed and consumers made worse off from the behavior of any firm, antitrust enforcers should act. And my experience suggests a successful case rests on three pillars. Secure foundation in the law, a solid factual basis, and strong economic evidence of an anticompetitive outcome. I also recommend that any assessment examine first antitrust laws as interpreted by the courts. Second, the application of that law to particular types of anticompetitive behavior in defined markets. And third, the boundaries between antitrust law and regulation. And i will briefly address each of these factors. A defining quality of an antitrust violation is the elimination or weakening of a market constraint on a firms power to set the terms of its interaction. In other words we examine the impact on the competitive process in which a firm makes its decisions on price, quality, and the neat to innovaed to inn. Enforcers should intervene only when firms gain or maintain mark power by means such as colluding with rivals or for a firm with market power, ganging engaging exclusionary conduct. Thus under current antitrust law, a dominant provider must maintain its position through legisla legitimate competition on the merits. This doesnt mean antitrust cant reach many of the competitive concerns discussed today as long as there is factual and economic evidence of cognizable competitive harm. And i would like to offer some recent examples. During my time as the acting chairman, when the ftc had only two members, one republican and one democrat, we successfully handled a total of 32 proposed mergers with significant competition concerns and brought forward nine different conduct cases. And our challenge to the merger between cdk and auto mate involved a large, substantial firm buying a relatively small upstart that appeared poised to challenge the market leaders more aggressively. Now, some have questioned whether the existing antitrust paradigm can ever reach this kind of behavior were a big player squashes or absorbs a promising upstart before it can grow into a more substantial exert. The cdk automate action shows that antitrust law can address this competitive issue if the facts and economic evidence support it. I would like to say a few words about vertical mergers the majority of which are procompetitive. Vertical mergers can however raise antitrust concerns when they can foreclose their rivals from a significant portion of the market. Thus, as with horizontal mergers, vertical deals should be evaluated on a casebycase basis based on all the evidence available and not prejudge based on the size of the parties or concerns outside of preserving market competition. The agencies can or the divestitures when justified by the facts and the law. Trying to unscramble the eggs or using a breakup as a remedy in a conduct matter is a drastic step that carries serious risk of doing more harm than good for competition and consumers. Aside from practical concerns, courts would require a particularly significant causal connection between the challenged conduct and creation or maintenance of the market power. Now, for those that seek to supplant antitrust with the regulatory approach, given the troubled history of extensive Market Regulation by government, we should carefully examine the assumption that regulators can divine the best course for markets. Further, the u. S. Has consistently been a strong voice globally for advocating in competition law to focus on consumer welfare goals and not to include other policy goals. And i fear that abandoning this clear position will encourage regimes around the world to pursue industrial policy goals such as favoring domestic industry to the detriment of u. S. Consumers and business interests. Thank you. Thank you very much. I new recognize mr. Szabo for five minutes. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you again for the opportunity to be here. Its been a long day, so im just going to give three points and then kind of explain them a little further. First, markets have an outstanding record at eroding first mover advantages that help Small Businesses become large. Two, bigger is better for consumers looking for choices or for Small Businesses looking for customers. And three, competition is robust. Americans know it. And americans know that weaponization of antitrust isnt for their benefit. Weve seen throughout the 21st century that markets naturally erode the first mover advantages that helped them get big. Search was once dominated by yahoo . It was later overtaken by google. Myspace was the dominant social network, later overtaken by facebook. As the chairman pointed out, facebook is now facing robust competition from ticktock, a new entrant, in the past couple of years. With the advent of the internet, weve removed the high startup costs often seen in traditional markets. The next big innovation is readily distributable. Further advancing the natural erosion of the first mover advantage. For americans and american Small Businesses, bigger is better. What we see here are twosided markets. You have consumers on one side and Small Businesses on the other. These platforms are operating as the bridge between the two. The connection is providing a muchneeded lifeline to americas main street businesses. And the bigger the platform, the better it is for these Small Businesses, because it gives greater access to more potential customers. It drives down prices for advertising. And with microtargeted ads, american businesses can be sure that every dollar they spend on advertising actually leads to sales, something you didnt have in traditional media. And dont take my word for it. Polling those that Online Platforms have helped nearly 60 of americans discover new Small Businesses. And good news for those worried about the death of entrepreneurship. The esteemed kaufman index, a nonpartisan group, shows entrepreneurship is at its highest levels in over a decade. Third, competition is robust. Americans know it. And then they know weaponization of antitrust is not for their benefit. There has never been more choice and more opportunity. For anyone whose home was damaged in the recent storms, they can easily find repairs on ye yelp, thumb tack, google, or angies list. When looking for social media, theres instagram, snapchat, discord, reddit, and youtube. For anyone looking to replace lost commodities, they can turn to ebay, overstock, amazon, rakuten and many, many more. Americans can quickly and easily do Comparison Shopping on price and services on multiple platforms and on multiple search engines. The internet continues to create more choices, lower prices, and better services. These are all things you dont see in a consolidated market. But advocates on this panel are calling for weaponization of antitrust to address perceived injustices. And thats just not the reality. Some of todays panelists say 50 of the market should now be considered a monopoly. Others, unable to prove that a dominant firm exists, say lets just take the top two, add them together and call it a duopoly. This isnt legitimate antitrust analysis. And at the end of the day, advocates calling for weaponization of antitrust stand alone from the rest of the country. Polling shows that only one in 20 american think tech should be the focus of government oversight. Less than one in five consumers are beneficiaries of a breakup of big tech. Thats because markets have an outstanding record at eroding first mover advantage, bigger is better, especially for americas Small Businesses, competition is robust, and your constituents know it. Thank you and i welcome your questions. Thank you. Before i recognize the next witness, i did not at all suggest that ticktock provided robust competition for facebook. Facebook continues to capture 80 of social media revenue. With all due respect, i dont want you to mischaracterize my Opening Statement. Ill make it as fast as possible. Good afternoon, chairman cicilline and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for holding this hearing. And finally to actually get down to giving Small Businesses a voice at the debate. Thank you. I get to start with good news. Weve heard a lot of bad news today but im going to start with good news. The app economy is thriving, growing from virtually nonexistent in 2007. We heard earlier about 1. 5 million jobs in the u. S. It is revolutionizing verticals making everything from agriculture to Health Care Better and smarter. My written testimony tacontains slew of facts and figures. But i want to share how the app economy is thriving in your district and what the world looked like for Software Companies before the platform revolution. Mr. Chairman, in providence, mojo tech is a company with 65 employees creating Software Solutions for health care, finance, and ecommerce companies. Your district has one of the leaders for cloud deployment for android and ios solutions. Representative armstrong, in fargo there is a Company Called excuse me. Youre stealing my thunder. Oh, no, im sorry. Lets get through it. Bushel does a basically has developed hardware for the grain supply chain. There are more than a thousand grain facilities utilized in their platform. Its a great example of the way that mobile apps can have that niche and really take advantage of it. Representative johnson, ive talked to you a few different times about Cool Companies in your district. This time i thought i would come and talk a little bit about atlantabased turbo jet, a smaller shop doing solutions for nonprofits including their website buildout, mobile enabled capabilities, more in the nonprofit space. In all of these cases, representatives, i have thousands of stories just like these from all 435 congressional districts, each benefiting from the explosion of platforms like the app store, google play, microsoft. You know who else benefitted . Consumers. Here on the table i have a copy of omni page pro. This was a software you bought if you needed to scan documents. If you wanted to turn it into a process, a way you could look at it in a word processor. Ive got this great review from pc world. They loved it back in 2005. The important fact in this review is it says the street price of this software in 2005 was 450. Now, right here ive got an app from a Company Called reattle that is nearly the same product level. It has a bunch of features that this one doesnt. Its 6. Basically now consumers bay less than 1 of what they used to pay for some of the same capability. And whats even better about that, even though i love the product from reattle, there are dozens of competitors in the app space. Simply put, theyve provided three things. A trusted space, reduced overhead, and given my developers nearly instant access to a global marketplace with billions of customers. Before the platforms, to get your software on a retail store shelf, companies had to spend years and thousands of dollars to a point where a distributor would handle a product. Then you would write a check for up front marketing, agree to refund the distributor for the cost of unsold boxes, and then spend tens of thousands of dollars to buy an end cap. The products you see on your store shelf or in the sunday flier arent there because the manager thought it was a cool product. Those products are displayed at the end of an aisle or an end cap because a Software Company or Consumer Goods Company literally pays for the shelf space. For many retailers, the sale of floor space and fliers makes a huge chunk of profitability for their store. None of this takes into consideration printing boxes, manuals, cds, dealing with credit cards, customs authorities if you want to sell abroad. In the 1990s, it cost a Million Dollars to start up a Software Company. Now its 100,000 in sweat equity. The average cost for Consumer Software has dropped from 50 to 3. For developers, our cost to market has dropped enormously and the size of our market has expanded globally. Of course its not all roses and sunshine. We appreciate this Committee Monitoring the ecosystem to monitor whats happening. One area thats fallen short is transparency. Another is safety and security. Some platforms have control over Device Security and others dont. But all of them should strive for security practices that protect everyone who uses the platform. Lastly, platforms have a role to play in removing pirated apps. Platforms should diligently respond to even the smallest developer when it comes to ip. Thank you. Im going to reduce our time to three minutes, i thank everyone and an apologize for the shortness, but they have just called votes again. Ms. Mitchell, youve written about a number of ways in which amazon leverages its core shopping platform to gain an competitive advantage over entrepreneurs, Small Businesses and other Third Party Sellers who attempt to sell their products on amazon. Can you elaborate on that, particularly in light of the testimony presented in the first panel, how amazon leverages its core place form to disadvantage Small Businesses and Third Party Sellers and how such tactics harm entrepreneurship and innovation online, how it impacts everyday people who live in our districts. Thats right, i spent a lot of time interviewing and talking with independent retailers, manufacturers of all sizes. Many of them are very much afraid of speaking out publicly because they fear retaliation. But what we consistently hear is that amazon is the biggest threat to their businesses. We just did a survey of about 550 independent retailers nationally. Amazon ranked number one in terms of being what they said was the biggest threat to their business, above Rising Health care costs, access to capital, government red tape, anything else you can name. Among those who were actually selling on the platform, only 7 reported that it was actually helping their bottom line. Amazon has a kind of godlike view of a growing share of our commerce and it uses the data it gathers to advantage its own business and its own business interests in lots of ways. A lot of this comes from the leverage to maximize its advantage, whether its promoting its own product because thats lucrative or its using the manufacturer of a product to squeeze a seller or a vendor into giving it bigger discounts. Thank you so much. Professor wu, extensively about the importance of enforcing antitrust laws in the Digital Markets in order to spur innovation, thats the subject of this hearing. Would you speak a little bit about why competition is so important to innovation, how does it affect peoples lives . Also how do you respond to the companies who say we are innovative ourselves, we dont need competition because well continue to innovate . Specifically will you also address mr. Szabos use of the word weapon nizing antitrust. Im not sure what he meant by that but we take seriously our obligation to enforce antitrust laws very seriously because we understand the value of competition. Im not exactly sure why anyone would suggest thats weaponizing it. Maybe you could respond to the critical nature of competition as it relates to innovation and why what were doing is not actually weaponizing but trying to promote competition. Thank you for the opportunity. Yes, to the word weaponization, i prefer the word enforcement. You know, when we talk about enforcing criminal laws, we dont talk about weaponizing, we talk about enforcing the laws. The states have a duty to enforce the laws. Congress passes them. Thats, you know, the way to think about this. I think historically speaking, the United States has experimented with two dinner types of innovation environment. One is centralized, where we allow industries to monopolize or oligopalize and we sit back and figure out what ibm will invent next, or at t. The other contrasting model is one where weve taken, or taken regulatory action, and done a lot to reduce the barriers to entry. What weve seen are very different pattern of innovation, much more kind of what economists sometimes call Disruptive Innovation or competition for the market as opposed to incremental, adding call waiting to at t. I think the comparative economic advantage of the United States over the last century has been its ability to start entire new industries. And in these big sort of centralized innovation industries, you dont see that. Instead you see whats called the kronos effect, wanting to stop those industries. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman from north dakota for three minutes. First i would like unanimous consent to enter Ranking Member collins statement into the record. Without objection. Ill also introduce the Opening Statement of the chairman of the committee, mr. Nadler, and a group of letters from a group of organizations contained on this list without objection. And i do appreciate, particularly, mr. Reed, when we recognize, i come from a very rural area. The closest what you would consider Big Box Store is minneapolis or denver. And so when were talking about competition, all of this, i also think weve got to remember at no time in time from my house in dickinso dickinson, north dakota, things that would require a plane ticket to buy can now be brought to our house. So when were talking about consumers, we need to remember that side of it too. Im glad you brought up bushel, its a fantastic company that has created i dont know if they qualify as a unicorn or not but theyve created a space that hasnt existed at this point as well as they do it. I dont know about this specific company but in technology or traditional business, there are startups who get to a point where they where a certain product and a certain idea but theyve gone as far as they can go and they get acquired. It can be in the oil and gas industry, any industry, the tech industry. So i would hope when we deal with this, we dont if at some point in time bushel decides they want to sell, i hope they have the ability to do that. I guess i would just go to this, and all of the witnesses talked about Different Companies and different what they viewed as problems or potential problems with those companies. But theyre not the same for every company. And i think thats where we go, is that its wellestablished that the role of antitrust enforcement is to ensure that companies with significant market power dont use that power to unfairly harm competitors or consumers. And traditionally in antitrust, its very companyspecific and very factspecific. There are limits to what antitrust can do. And enforcement process often takes years. Outside of antitrust, we dont have to exist in that of your ver universe. Please be quick. Yes, there are. My report outlines a number of things that a regulator could do. Regulations that break down Entry Barriers and try to make a more Playing Field for Small Businesses and entrepreneurs to actually get share and compete, thats the kind of regulation that i think would be really helpful. I would say support for open standards and ensuring that we dont have abusive use of patent rights in a way that actually harms open standards that are done in a voluntary manner. And i would warn against turning to a know it when i see it definition for antitrust or monopoly and instead actually doing a fact analysis and an independent analysis as youve suggested. I agree with trying to break down regulatory barriers for Small Business and entrepreneurs. But i would caution against creating a single regulator. When you look at the history of the Civil Aeronautics Board and the fcc in the preat t breakup, there are important lessons there. The gentleman from georgia for three minutes. Thank you. Weve run out of time. I do want to thank the panelists for being with us today. I know its a late evening for you all, you had not planned on being here. I want to thank the chairman for hosting this very important topic today. If we do not oversee whats going on in this digital economy, in this digital marketplace, with the four come to dominant players that we hosted in the first panel, if we dont understand how those practices affect consumers, we will never be able to regulate or legislate as may be necessary. So i do appreciate us having this hearing today, which is one in a series. And with that i yield back. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. I do want to thank the witnesses. We will continue to rely on you as resources as we continue this investigation. I appreciate your patience and your testimony today. This will conclude our hearing. I want to again thank our witnesses. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit written questions for the witnesses or additional materials for the record. Without objection, this hearing is adjourned. Cspans washington journal. Live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up Tuesday Morning, the Hills National security reporter Morgan Chalfont joins to us preview special counsel Robert Muellers congressional testimony wednesday. Then we talk with New York Times magazine contributing writer matithia schwartz. Watch washington journal live Tuesday Morning at 7 00 eastern. Join the discussion. And tuesday, testimony from fbi director Christopher Wray on over the issues at the fbi. Hell be speaking before the Senate JudiciaryCommittee Live on cspan3. And adam schiff will discuss the Mueller Investigation and upcoming testimony. Hell look at whats being done to protect u. S. Elections from foreign interference. The conversation hosted by the center for american progress, live at 2 00 eastern also on cspan3. Both chambers of congress are in session this week. Those expected to be at the house last week before the august recess. The Senate Returns tuesday to continue debate on the nomination of mark esper to be the next defense secretary. A confirmation vote is expected. Also tuesday, votes on the housepassed 9 11 Victim Compensation fund. Follow the senate live on cspan2. And the house plans to work on a bill to secure Retirement Savings for workers and retirees. Theyll also debate legislation that addresses Border Security and accountability at all levels of the Homeland Security department. Watch the house live on cspan. Robert mueller testifies to congress on wednesday about possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by President Trump and russian interference in the 2016 president ial election. Live coverage starts at 11 30 a. M. Eastern on cspan3, online at cspan. Org, or listen with the free cspan radio app. Before the hearing, listen to the complete Mueller Report. Type Mueller Report audio in the search box at the top of the page. Next, a hearing examining ways to increase water storage and conservation in western states we also heard about water supply infrastructure. Held by a Senate Energy subcommittee, this is an hour. The hearing of the Senate Energy natural resources