The United States Congress attacks the omnipotence of the Gafa and even proposes radical solutions to limit their power.

Nicolas Barré takes stock of a current economic issue.

After Europe, it is the Congress of the United States which attacks the omnipotence of the Gafa and even proposes radical solutions to limit their power.

Among these solutions, the American deputies go so far as to speak of dismantling, which is not trivial.

The House of Representatives Antitrust Committee investigated the practices of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple for a year and a half.

Conclusion, "these firms have turned into monopolies of a kind that we last saw in the era of the oil and rail barons", in other words a century ago.

And the deputies drive the point home: "these firms have too much power" and this power threatens the economy and democracy.

In its 450-page report, the anti-trust commission draws up an impressive list of tactics implemented by the Gafa to distort competition.

Having said that, is there really a will to attack their power?

The deputies propose to rewrite the anti-trust law so that it is possible to force these Internet giants to restructure some of their activities, or even to split them.

There have been examples in the past: ATT, the telecoms giant, was split up in the 1980s. But with the Gafa, we changed scale, we are dealing with much more powerful monopolies.

The Congress report cites the example of Facebook which, by dint of having bought out or killed its competitors, is competing within its own empire: Facebook is in competition with its subsidiary Instagram.

But obviously, it's very controlled competition: we stay with the family.

If we are there, it is also because the competition policeman does not play his role: the deputies note that he has validated without flinching more than 500 acquisitions by the Gafa for twenty years without finding anything to to repeat.

Should the Gafa fear a possible victory for Joe Biden?

These are elected Democrats who are on the offensive, it's true.

But there is no consensus in the American political class to erode the whole Gafa.

Remember what Barack Obama said: "our businesses have the Internet".

This is not entirely true.

Chinese competitors, like TikTok for example, are increasingly overshadowing the American giants.

Elected Democrats will continue to step up in Congress.

But there is little chance that a majority will form to dismantle one day the giants of the Net.