Senator Klobuchar recently reintroduced the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), a major antitrust bill designed to target self-preferencing by large technology firms. In a new insight, Director of Technology and Innovation Policy Jeffrey Westling makes the case that the European Union’s (EU) largely similar legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), has already stifled technological innovation in European markets, and that proponents of AICOA should draw lessons from the EU’s experience.

Key points:

• AICOA’s prohibitions against self-preferencing largely resemble the DMA, which has already begun to limit the deployment of new services in Europe – such as Meta’s new application, Threads — despite not yet having gone into effect.
• As Congress considers AICOA, it should seriously consider the DMA’s effects on businesses and competition in the EU, as its focus on competitors will likely harm the consumers these laws are intended to protect.
• AICOA, as currently drafted, would make many of the same mistakes as the DMA, and reproduce in the United States the same harms Europe has experienced.

Read the analysis