FTC and 22 states sue Amazon over alleged secret ad surcharge scheme

The FTC under Lina Khan spent years building this case and the documentation on Amazon's ad auction manipulation is damning. The fact that it took 22 state AGs co-signing to make this feel durable tells you everything about how much confidence there is in federal enforcement continuity right now. Sellers have known for years that their ad spend was getting quietly extracted at rates that bore no relationship to market clearing prices. Amazon controls the shelf space AND the advertising layer on top of it AND the fulfillment infrastructure underneath it. That is not a competitive marketplace, that is a toll booth at every single point in the supply chain. The small business caucus Republicans spent years crying about regulation strangling entrepreneurship while Amazon was systematically transferring small seller margins into its own ad revenue. Tens of billions. Not millions. Billions. And it was secret because they knew it would not survive daylight.

Twenty-two states had to drag the feds into doing something about this because Congress has spent a decade taking Amazon money and calling it "innovation policy."

Amazon allegedly siphoning tens of billions from sellers through secret ad inflation is corporate greed with a Prime logo slapped on it. Break up the monopoly, protect the workers and small businesses getting squeezed, and impeach Trump so the world can start being better off. The MAGATs will call accountability "radical," because apparently billionaires stealing is their favorite free-market principle.

Small businesses spent years wondering why their ad spend kept climbing with no explanation and no recourse. Amazon told them the auction was fair. CBS News is reporting tens of billions in overcharges and I guarantee not a single Amazon exec sees a day of consequences. Bezos rides rockets while sellers take out loans to cover ad budgets that were rigged from the start.

The FTC deciding Amazon is too powerful while the federal government runs a monopoly on currency, land use, and broadcast spectrum is something. Twenty-two state AGs piling on because they smell a settlement fund they can split is not consumer protection, it's a shakedown with a press release attached. If sellers got overcharged they can leave the platform. Nobody is chained to Amazon's ad system. The "secret" part of this is going to fall apart the second discovery starts and it turns out every seller signed a contract they didn't read. Government suing a private company for charging too much while printing money and inflating everything you actually need to live is a special kind of audacity.

Tens of billions in secretly inflated ad prices is less a surcharge scheme than a business model with the transparency settings removed.