What is the content of Amazon asking Congress to legislate to regulate 'unfair price lifting'?

In the event of an emergency such as a natural disaster or an epidemic of an infectious disease, the prices of items essential for people's lives may rise unreasonably. To prevent this from happening, Amazon has called on the US Congress to enact legislation that regulates the unjustified lifting of prices.

It's time for Congress to establish a federal price gouging law

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/13/top-amazon-exec-calls-for-federal-price-gouging-law-amid-coronavirus-scams.html

The online shop is running out of stock of items whose demand has rapidly increased due to the epidemic of the new coronavirus, especially out of masks, protective clothing, and hand sanitizers. For this reason, Amazon is also raising prices by vendors, and it was reported that Amazon's N95 mask, which was 13.28 dollars (about 1420 yen) before it was out of stock, soared to $ 195 (about 20,840 yen). It was .

Amazon is working to control such price increases by third parties. For example, Amazon automatically finds products that are being sold at an unreasonable price and withdraws them, and for particularly high-demand items such as masks and hand sanitizers, a specialized team identifies products with unreasonable prices. I am investigating. As a result of this effort, more than 500,000 products have already been removed from the page, and in addition, over 4000 accounts have been suspended in the United States alone as a policy violation.

However, since the above efforts are not enough, Amazon's vice president of public policy Mr. Brian Hughman requested Congress to enact'price regulation law 'on May 13, 2020. It was.

34 states, which is two-thirds of all states in the United States, have enacted price regulation laws to prevent the prices of products from soaring after a disaster. Although the content differs depending on the state, it is mainly in the form of 'emergency' 'only for items necessary for survival' 'fixing price limit'.

Hughesman says, 'Each state has its own legislation on price lifting, but federal law guarantees that consumers will have no difference in protection.' It helps to effectively prevent and ensure a fair price, 'said Amazon, who said he was ready to engage in legislation with stakeholders.

Hughesman also added that the legislation was 'unavoidable' because of the need to authorize the Federal Trade Commission to pursue fraudsters in order to be able to respond more quickly and to higher costs such as transportation and labor costs. We are making some recommendations, including the need to create a price standard that takes “price increase” into consideration. 'In a nutshell, we want to prevent hand sanitizers from going down to 40,000 yen after an emergency, but we don't want to punish the inevitable price spikes caused by supply chain disruptions,' Hughesman said. It was.

In addition, Amazon has been affected variously from the new coronavirus epidemic in addition to the product price, and received a great deal of criticism for dismissing employees who sought to improve the working environment, the jurisdiction of 13 states / special wards The Secretary is requesting information on measures against the new coronavirus.

State Attorney General sends an open letter about Amazon's new corona measures-GIGAZINE