The US Treasury Department is backing an investigation into Amazon, which is accused of disrupting retail in the country.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has reportedly announced the need for antitrust investigations against many large technology companies. Including Amazon, since the activities of this giant retailer are extremely negative for the activities of small businesses. Earlier, the US Department of Justice made an official statement that it plans to mass check all fairly large companies. The purpose of this review is to find out how these companies achieved their current power. The Ministry is interested in whether they did not take any steps that could be regarded as illegal ways of conducting competition.
Amazon's reaction to Mnuchin's words was immediate. The company claims that small and medium-sized businesses, on the contrary, thrive with it. After all, about 58% sales goods on Amazon account for independent sellers, whose overall business is growing faster than the business of the company itself. The vast majority of retail sales (about 90%) are still made in regular stores.
Some time ago, an antitrust investigation against Amazon was also launched in the European Union. They suspect that the Internet giant may use data obtained from various independent retailers that place their goods on the site for their own needs. That is, Amazon can collect all the data about the sellers and their sales, and this is illegal because it violates the competition rules adopted in the EU. And if it turns out that this is the case, then the Internet giant could be fined more than 10% of its turnover.
