President Donald Trump's tweets about Amazon aren't going to make regulatory action against the company more likely, according to antitrust experts. If anything, they'll be counterproductive. "If you could bet on the agencies taking no action, I'd be standing there with a handful of tickets," said William Kovacic, professor of global competition law and policy at George Washington University and director of Competition Law Center. "The last thing the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission want is to become puppets of elected officials. They'll run your life every minute." Trump continued his Twitter attack on Amazon on Tuesday, saying the world's fourth-largest company is "costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy." Tweet He has called Amazon a "no-tax monopoly" and, according to a Vanity Fair article, is pondering ways to "f--- with" Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. monopoly tweet Presidents and other elected officials have called out companies for hurting consumers for decades. But while political rhetoric can cause companies to proceed with caution on pricing and acquisitions, it won't cause a regulatory agency to move forward with a monopoly or monopsony case, said Keith Hylton, professor of law at Boston University. "I still believe there's a fair amount of independence both within the DOJ and the FTC from the president," Hylton said. "The norms and procedures with the agencies don't change much across the administrations. There's not a lot of room for Trump to go after individual companies."

Amazon's real antitrust concerns

That's not to say Amazon is free and clear from regulatory scrutiny. The agencies are "absolutely" taking a closer look at the digital economy and market power of Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants, Kovacic said.

President Donald Trump. Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty Images

Here are some possible avenues regulators could pursue: Unfair competition. If Amazon is vulnerable to antitrust law, it will be because regulators are changing the way they interpret antitrust law, said Lina Khan, who published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" in the Yale Law Journal in January. Amazon wouldn't be punished for price gouging, since it generally pursues low prices at the expense of profits. Instead, it would be attacked for pushing other competitors out of the market. "It's definitely true that you don't want antitrust to be used in protectionist ways," Khan said. "But it's also true that you can't have competition without competitors." Favoring its own products. The Trump administration could enforce antitrust laws by suing Amazon "for using its platform and algorithms in a biased manner that prioritizes Amazon's own products and services over those of merchants that are dependent on Amazon's platform and with whom Amazon competes," according to a December 2016 paper published by The Capitol Forum, a news and analysis service that focuses on how policy affects market competition. (This would be similar to how the European Union went after Google.) "It only takes one enforcement action covering a narrow instance of Amazon employing such bias to create precedent that could put its business model — leveraging its platform to vertically integrate into a wide range of industries — at risk," according to the analysis. Acquisitions. Amazon may also take a more cautionary approach toward future acquisitions if it knows it's being watched by both Trump and regulators, Kovacic said. Amazon bought doorbell-maker Ring for about $1 billion in February and acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion last year. Still, the DOJ should operate independently from the president on decisions to block deals. Hylton believes Amazon's Whole Foods acquisition would be approved today, just as it was last year. Regardless, bringing a "giant monopolization case" against Amazon would be foolish unless the agencies had reams of evidence to back up a case, Kovacic said. That's not going to be affected by Trump one way or another, he said. "There's no question being in the spotlight makes companies more cautious," Kovacic said. "But bringing a case against Amazon won't be easy. Most antitrust professionals, when pushed to do something that would not be sustainable, say 'check, please' and head for the exit."

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