Is the FTC Trying to Break Up Amazon? A Judge Just Ordered It to Say

On April 6, Judge John Chun in Seattle ordered the FTC to provide “each and every remedy and form of relief” it intends to seek in its monopolization case against Amazon. By May 1, the FTC must finally reveal if it wants to break up Amazon, an outcome that could lead to substantial losses for small businesses and significantly higher prices for consumers. 

The Court found that the agency’s prior responses to Amazon’s interrogatories regarding remedies were “a collection of vague goals and hypothetical remedies.” This raises the question of why the FTC has been so reluctant to share the specific remedies it intends to seek in the case. Two options come to mind, neither of which is flattering to the agency.

One option is that the FTC may not yet have a coherent remedial theory because it built its liability case around a conclusion first – that Amazon is a monopolist – and spent the intervening years searching for a framework to support it. This would also explain the FTC’s inability to articulate who Amazon’s competitors are and the agency’s artificially narrow market definitions.

The other possibility is that, while the FTC knows the remedies it wants to seek, it does not want to publicize them yet, as it knows they will be highly unpopular with the consumers and small businesses it claims to protect, and would end up harming them. Given recent cases brought against digital companies by the U.S. antitrust agencies, the likely remedies sought (overly burdensome behavioral remedies or even a breakup) would cause real harm to consumers.

The FTC’s hesitation to specify the remedies it seeks is a symptom of the agency’s broader struggle to articulate its case. Since day one, the agency has struggled to define the market it claims Amazon dominates. In its lawsuit filed in September 2023, the agency alleges that Amazon’s business practices have stifled competition and caused prices to rise. The agency does so, in part, by creating two artificially narrow markets: the “online superstore market” for consumers and the “online marketplace services market” for third-party sellers. 

While Amazon accounts for roughly 4 percent of total U.S. retail sales, there is substantial evidence that online and offline retail prices are identical 95 percent of the time, with nearly contemporaneous price movements, suggesting that online and offline retail compete in the same market rather than independently. Walmart’s rapid scale – converting its 4,700-plus stores into hybrid fulfillment nodes, creating over 10,000 shipping locations nationwide, and a logistics footprint that combines 150-plus distribution centers, five next-generation automated fulfillment facilities, and 210 traditional distribution centers – is a clear example of the intense competition Amazon faces. Moreover, Walmart’s third-party seller marketplace grew 34 percent in Q4 2024, and by mid-2025, Walmart Marketplace surpassed 200,000 active sellers, achieving an annualized growth rate that significantly outpaces Amazon’s. 

Claiming that Amazon is an “entrenched monopolist,” when looking at the empirical data from 2024 and 2025, fails to capture the dynamic reality on the ground. These concerns are not theoretical: during the “Economics Day” hearing, the FTC struggled to clearly articulate who Amazon competes with, even claiming that Amazon might compete in a market by itself.

Online retail has been one of the few consistent sources of price relief for American households over the past decade, with significant consumer benefits being derived from omnichannel retail competition. At a time when consumer affordability should be a key political priority, a Biden-era case likely to result in higher prices and a worse shopping experience for consumers does not align with the administration’s agenda.

With the court’s May 1 deadline and the upcoming oversight hearing in the Senate, the FTC will have to answer the question it has been dodging for years. When the agency reveals the remedies it intends to seek, consumers will be able to judge what the case is actually about: whether the FTC is looking out for them, or for Amazon’s competitors.