Open Markets Applauds New York Citizens For Stopping Amazon Raid on City Coffers

Today, New Yorkers won a big victory against one of the most powerful corporations in the world. The New York Times reported that Amazon cancelled plans to build a second “headquarters,” or HQ2, in Queens in exchange for nearly $3 billion in subsidies from the people of New York. Open Markets Institute applauds the citizens, grass roots organizers, and local lawmakers who rejected the bad deal struck last November by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. (Read our statement on the original deal here.)

Open Markets board member Zephyr Teachout has been a vocal opponent of the deal and a lead organizer in the movement to block Amazon’s exploitation of New York. “This is a really huge win,” she said today. “It’s extraordinary when individual workers and independent businesses can beat the richest man in the world, with his army of lobbyists and consultants. We are at a turning point in this country. The American people are no longer going to bow down to wealth and corporate control.”

Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn said that “Americans should now drive forward to protect our democracy and markets from Amazon’s increasingly dangerous concentration of power and control. We have all the tools we need in America’s traditional anti-monopoly laws to make Amazon safe for the people who buy and sell on its online marketplaces. It’s time to demand that our law enforcers and politicians stand up and do the jobs we hired them to do, which is to cut Amazon down to size.”