That's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn that it affects only maybe Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Read the definition of "covered platform".
Not arguable. Bills of Attainder refer to criminal laws and are specifically to stop government abuses of personal liberty. Corporations don’t have a guaranteed right to consistent laws, otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much on lobbying. The knife cuts both ways.
Huawei has argued that sanctions against their company constitute a bill of attainder.[1] The provision that an executive can have 100% of their income from the company seized, though, is arguably a criminal provision. But looking at the history of bill of attainder cases, this probably won't be considered one.
That's related to national security, which has (little to) nothing to do with antitrust?
Also, I don't really think the courts would agree with you based on their interpretation of civil forfeiture laws. The only unusual thing in the Huawei case is that it happened to someone with serious money.
For example, Apple will likely be forbidden from making a device where the selling point is that it only runs code from their own app store, but if some random Android company does the same thing by vastly modifying AOSP/their hardware to the point where it can't be rooted and can only install apps via their own store, why are they not punished? as a consumer I'm equally harmed in the same ways by both companies, the only difference is that, in the second situation, my freedom being violated is less important when 50 million other americans aren't also suffering at the hands of that company.
Size matters in anti-trust law as the larger a company is, the more market power it has, and therefore more ability to have anti-competitive effects on the market.
> but if some random Android company does the same thing..... why are they not punished?
Because in standard anti-trust law theory, the same exact action done by a smaller company is legal, but can be illegal if done by a larger company.
The reason being that a smaller company is unable to anti-competitively control an entire market as well as a larger company can.
> as a consumer I'm equally harmed
Anti-trust law does not agree that consumers are equally harmed by a large company, with more market power, engaging in anti-competitive practices as compared to when a smaller company, with less market power, does the same.
As in literally yes, according to the law, certain actions are only illegal if a large company does it, and literally yes a smaller company is allowed to do the same exact thing simply because they have less market power.
So the key difference of size is the ability to find alternatives. If a monopoly is abusive, you rarely have any options. If a smaller player makes an abusive play, consumers will abandon it and it will fail. Google and Apple are a duopoly but since they've both decided on the same abusive practices, consumers have no exit without government intervention.
Basically, antitrust works in a world that expects the market to correct things, but patches a design flaw (monopolization) which prevents the market from doing so.
I think the difference lies on the number of people affected. The philosophy behind those laws is that it's generally a bad idea to let one single company (or very few companies) control the pipe from which so many economic activity flows.
Arguably it's a bill of attainder.