The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that will increase fees drastically for antitrust reviews of the biggest mergers and strengthen state attorneys general in antitrust fights.
The bipartisan bill, which still requires approval from the US Senate, combines a merger fee bill introduced by Representative Joe Neguse, a Democrat, and a measure mandating that state attorneys general can pick the venue for antitrust lawsuits, which was introduced by Representative Ken Buck, a Republican.
The bill, which passed by a vote of 242-184, is one of several measures under consideration that would strengthen antitrust enforcers to rein in Big Tech.
Another bill would prevent Big Tech companies like Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com from showing preference to their own products on platforms while another addresses the monopolies held by Apple and Google in their respective app stores. Chances of either bill passing are believed to be fairly low though.
The legislation approved by the House will reduce fees paid for antitrust reviews of smaller deals to as little as $30,000. Bigger deals would be more expensive. Deals worth $5 billion or more would pay $2.25 million for their review.
A previous version of the filing fee bill had also included budget increases for the US Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission, but those have since been removed.
The Senate has passed a bill giving state attorneys general the right to pick the venue for antitrust fights but has not passed a measures updating merger filing fees.