President Calvin Coolidge famously proclaimed that the “business of America is business.” Now, 100 years later, President Joe Biden has all but proclaimed that the “business of my administration is ruining American business.”
The economic malaise and crippling inflation of the last three years notwithstanding, Biden’s staff only seem to want to help businesses if they aren’t American.
At least this was the message last week when it was announced that tech titan Amazon would not be merging with iRobot. Most famous for its floor-cleaning drone the Roomba, iRobot had been in conversation with Amazon for a $1.7 billion acquisition since Aug. 2022.
The companies blamed the merger’s failure on regulatory interference by the European Union (EU) in a joint press release.
“This outcome will deny consumers faster innovation and more competitive prices, which we’re confident would have made their lives easier and more enjoyable,” Amazon Senior VP David Zapolsky said in the release. “Undue and disproportionate regulatory hurdles discourage entrepreneurs, who should be able to see acquisition as one path to success, and that hurts both consumers and competition—the very things that regulators say they’re trying to protect.”
EU officials have been colluding with the Biden administration to hamstring American tech innovation, particularly in the high-stakes race for artificial intelligence. This is because, as Politico succinctly put it, the EU fears a “repeat of what happened with the last generation of internet giants. When social media, search and cloud firms boomed, it created titans like Facebook’s parent company Meta, Google and Amazon — but reduced Europe to a bystander unable to catch up and compete.”
Alas, the business of the European Union is ruining business with socialism.
So, unable to keep up, the EU is abusing its regulatory powers to cripple American companies. EU antitrust czar Margrethe Vestager said as much when she was in the U.S. to brainstorm with the Biden administration about how to over-regulate tech companies.
Indeed, administration officials wasted no time to celebrate the prevention of the Amazon-iRobot merger. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Associate Director for Merger Analysis Nathan Soderstrom said, “We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction … The Commission’s investigation revealed significant concerns about the transaction’s potential competitive effects.”
One lawmaker who urged the FTC to prevent the merger was Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose campaign slogan was “I’ve got a plan for that!” when she ran to become America’s first Native American president. After the merger failed, iRobot announced it would also be laying off 31 percent of its workforce — so apparently Warren’s “plan” includes destroying people’s livelihoods.
But it seems like this actually is all part of a plan for the Democrats to engineer a post-American world. (If you’d like to buy a copy of their blueprint, it’s available on Amazon!). Biden administration officials swarmed a recent anti-trust conference in Brussels — explicitly called the “New World Order” — where the main topic was how to undermine U.S. companies. The event was organized by TikTok adviser Cristina Caffara, who is closely allied with FTC attack dog Lina Khan.
Under Khan, high-level government sabotage of mergers have included Adobe’s plans to buy Figma and JetBlue’s plans to buy Spirit Airlines. Antitrusting American companies seems to be why Khan thinks God put her on the earth. Khan has declared war against Amazon, as she demonstrated when she opposed the company’s acquisition of Diapers.com … even though she admits she herself buys diapers from Amazon.
Alas Khan was nowhere to be seen during the Obama administration, during which Democrats were happy to bless any tech monopoly acquisition it could — like when Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 or again when Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014.
Anything that undermines the autonomy of U.S. companies strengthens the goals of our global adversaries, namely the Chinese Communist Party.
Indeed, in the aforementioned press release, the Amazon executive said that, “Mergers and acquisitions like this help companies like iRobot better compete in the global marketplace, particularly against companies, and from countries, that aren’t subject to the same regulatory requirements in fast-moving technology segments like robotics.”
What the Democrats are doing now isn’t stalwart championing of workers’ rights in the face of 20th-century “greed is good” Wall Street robber barons. It’s enabling the emergence of a CCP-dominated 21st century. If Democrats don’t understand that the business of America is business, could they at least not help China build its fleet of attack drones?
Jared Whitley is an award-winning columnist and DC politico, having worked in the U.S. Senate, White House, and defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult Business School in Dubai.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.