ICLE’s Manne: Revised AICOA Doubles Down on Flawed Antitrust Shortcut
WASHINGTON (June 11, 2026) — The latest version of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) fails to fix the bill’s central legal and economic flaws—and in several ways makes them worse—said Geoffrey A. Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE).
As in earlier versions, AICOA’s latest iteration would impose special competition rules on a small number of large online platforms, restricting common practices such as self-preferencing, defaults, product integration, limits on data access, and certain responses to user or business-user complaints.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced the bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and four cosponsors. The new version replaces the prior “covered platform” framework with a “systemically important platform” label based on a revenue- and user-reach formula. The basic conduct rules, however, remain largely the same.
“AICOA has always been a solution in search of a problem,” Manne said. “The new version does not change that and reiterates the same bad ideas. Calling a company a ‘systemically important platform’ doesn’t establish consumer harm, and it doesn’t justify abandoning the consumer-welfare standard that has anchored U.S. antitrust law for decades.”
Manne said the 2026 bill would narrow the number of likely targets while making the legal regime more aggressive. It lowers the competition-harm threshold to anything above de minimis; raises the burden for key safety, privacy, and security defenses; requires companies to produce ordinary-course records created at or before the challenged conduct; and eliminates a defense for conduct needed to maintain or substantially improve a platform’s core functionality.
Manne said AICOA’s economic assumptions remain flawed. The bill treats vertical integration, self-preferencing, and default settings as suspect, even though those practices often make products better, safer, and easier to use.
“Consumers benefit when a smartphone comes with useful built-in tools, when search results are integrated and relevant, and when an online marketplace can offer fast, reliable fulfillment,” Manne said. “AICOA would push the largest platforms toward becoming passive, less useful intermediaries. That is not competition policy. It is product design by litigation threat.”
“The revised bill would turn routine product-design decisions like how to rank results, set defaults, integrate features, protect data, fight spam, stop fraud, and secure users into litigation triggers, deterring conduct that would benefit consumers.”
The bill also replaces the earlier enforcement-guidelines process with expedited litigation provisions that direct courts to prioritize these cases and seek final judgment within one year. While the bill lowers the maximum civil penalty from 15% to 10% of U.S. revenue during the violation period, it adds a 1% floor once penalties are imposed.
“That is not leniency,” Manne said. “It is a new floor for enormous fines, even in close cases involving unsettled legal questions.”
Manne also warned that AICOA borrows from the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, a regulatory model he said should serve as a warning rather than a template.
“Europe has spent years trying to regulate its way into technological leadership,” Manne said. “The result has not been more innovation or better products for consumers. It has been degraded services, delayed features, and enormous compliance costs. Congress should take heed before importing that model.”
“Renaming the targets, lowering the harm threshold, and speeding up the lawsuits do not cure AICOA,” Manne said. “They make the bill more arbitrary, more litigation-driven, and more hostile to the product integration consumers value.”
ICLE scholars have analyzed AICOA across its prior iterations:
- “10 Things the American Innovation and Choice Online Act Gets Wrong” — Dirk Auer (Jan. 18, 2022)
- “How Tech Startups Could Be a Casualty of the War on Self-Preferencing” — Geoffrey A. Manne (Jun. 3, 2022)
- “AICOA Is Neither Urgently Needed Nor Good” — Thomas A. Lambert (July 25, 2022)
- “The Catch-22 of AICOA’s Guidelines” — Geoffrey A. Manne (July 25, 2022)
- “Reining in Digital Competition to No Good End: Will AICOA and OAMA Rise from the Grave?” — Daniel J. Gilman and Lazar Radic (Mar. 8, 2023)
- “Regulate for What? A Closer Look at the Rationale and Goals of Digital Competition Regulations” — Lazar Radic, Geoffrey A. Manne, and Dirk Auer (Apr. 1, 2025)
To interview Manne, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected].
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.