FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Andrea Beaty, [email protected]
A new report this weekend revealed how the wife of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has maintained significant financial ties to Big Tech companies even as the Senate Finance Committee Chairman is playing a leading role in Big Tech’s global push for deregulation. Wyden pushed for President Biden to reverse the United States Trade Representative’s withdrawal of support for proposals that would, per Rolling Stone, “enshrine the tech industry’s preferred anti-regulatory framework in international trade negotiations,” including preemption for stricter data privacy and security, artificial intelligence, and app store regulations.
Meanwhile, Senator Wyden’s most recent financial disclosures show his wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, “owns up to $1 million in Apple stock; $1 million in Microsoft; $500,000 in Amazon; and $500,000 in Google,” the very same companies pushing for global deregulation.
In response to recent reporting, the Revolving Door Project’s Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:
“We cannot ever know if Senator Wyden has managed to maintain a firewall between his work and his wife’s financial stake in Big Tech, but we can be certain that Wyden’s vocal advocacy of Big Tech represents, at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of interest. Wyden chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees America’s trade policy, including specifically the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, as well as tax policy, including specifically issues of great concern to large multinational corporations such as Big Tech. Wyden should either disentangle himself from Big Tech financially or step down from Chairing the committee of greatest import to Big Tech.”
Revolving Door Project Research Director Andrea Beaty issued the following statement:
“After facing a tide of enforcement actions from domestic regulators like the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission, Big Tech is hedging its bets on preserving their monopoly power through global-level trade rules. Undoubtedly they are pulling on every relationship they have, in the White House and in Congress, to make their anti-regulatory push. That Finance Committee Chairman Wyden would participate in this scheme, despite his potential conflict of interest, shows just how desperate the Big Tech giants are to secure their continued monopoly power, one way or another.”
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Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture; Public Domain Work; https://flic.kr/p/27pcJ59