Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) on Wednesday pledged during the first 2020 Democrat presidential debate in Miami, Florida, to “single out” Amazon in an effort to combat “corporate consolidation” if elected president.
A transcript is as follows:
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: There is a debate in this part right now about the role of corporations, as you know. Senator Warren, in particular, put out a plan to break up tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. You said, “we should not be running around pointing at companies and breaking them up with any kind of process.” Why do you disagree?
SEN. CORY BOOKER: I don’t think I disagree. We have a serious problem in our country with corporate consolidation. We see the evidence of that in how dignity is being stripped from labor and we have people who have full-time jobs and still can’t make a living wage. We see that consumer prices are being raised by pharmaceutical companies that often have monopolistic holds on drugs. You see that by the fact that this is actually an economy that’s hurting small businesses by not allowing them to compete. One of the most aggressive bills in the Senate on corporate consolidation is mine. I feel very strongly about the need to check the corporate consolidation and let the free market work. I’ll tell you this, I live in a low-income black and brown community and I see every single day that this economy is not working for average Americans. The indicators that are being used, from GDP to Wall Street’s rankings, is not helping people in my community. It is about time we have an economy that works for everybody, not just the wealthiest in our nation.
GUTHRIE: You did say that you didn’t think it was right to name names, to name companies and single them out, as Senator Warren has. Why is that?
BOOKER: Again, I will single out companies like Haliburton and Amazon that pay nothing in taxes and we need to change that. When it comes to anti-trust law, what I will do is number one appoint judges that will enforce it and number two have a DOJ and a federal trade commission that will go through the processes necessary to check this corporate concentration.