When Jeff Bezos was CEO of Amazon, he took an arm’s length stance on the company’s business in Washington. He rarely lobbied lawmakers. He testified only once before Congress, under threat of subpoena.
Andy Jassy, the successor to Mr. Bezos, try a different approach.
Since becoming Amazon’s CEO last July, Mr. Jassy, 54, has visited Washington at least three times to traverse Capitol Hill and visit the White House. In September, he met Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff. He has called Democratic Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer to lobby against antitrust law and has spoken with Virginia Democrat Senator Tim Kaine about Amazon’s new corporate campus in the state.
“He was very curious,” said Mr. Kaine, who met with Mr. Jassy at the Capitol and spoke to him on the phone last month. mr. Jassy was diplomatic rather than out to “fool you” by “personality,” said Mr. Kaine, and he came prepared with knowledge of the legislature’s committee duties.
Mr. Jassy’s actions in Washington are a sign of a new era taking shape at Amazon. The CEO, who joined the company in 1997 and built his cloud computing company Amazon Web Services, followed Mr. Bezos’ footsteps for years and was considered one of his closest lieutenants. Last year’s succession was largely seen as a continuation of Mr. Bezos’ culture and way of working.
But Mr. Jassy has quietly left his own mark on Amazon, making more changes than many insiders and business watchers expected.
He has delved into the key areas of the business that Mr. Bezos has handed over to his deputies, especially logistics operations. He has admitted that Amazon was overbuilding and cutting costs, closing its brick-and-mortar bookstores and shelving some warehouse expansion plans. He has embarked on a tumultuous leadership overhaul. And while he has reiterated the company’s opposition to unions, it has also taken a more conciliatory tone with Amazon’s 1.6 million employees.
Perhaps the biggest difference from Mr. Bezos is the new chief executive’s much more hands-on approach to the regulatory and political challenges in Washington.
Mr. Jassy has been more concerned with exploring Amazon’s wider role as an employer and in society beyond serving customers, said Matt McIlwain, a managing partner at the Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, who is an early investor in the company was.
“I think things like that matter more to Andy,” said Mr. McIlwain, who Mr. Bezos and Mr. Jassy has known for over two decades. “Jeff has more of a libertarian mentality.”
Mr. Jassy’s efforts may have been born of necessity. Political leaders, activists and academics are scrutinizing Amazon for its dominance. The company has responded by expanding its lobbying apparatus in Washington, spending $19.3 million on federal lobbying by 2021, compared to $2.2 million a decade earlier, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks influence in Washington.
Understand the Unionization Efforts at Amazon
The challenges are getting bigger. The Federal Trade Commission, led by lawyer Lina Khan, is investigating whether Amazon has violated antitrust laws. Last year, Mr. Biden threw his support behind Amazon workers trying to unite; he has since hosted a union organizer from an Amazon warehouse in the Oval Office. And Congress could soon vote on an antitrust law that would make it harder for Amazon to choose its own brands over competitors on its site.
An Amazon spokeswoman, Tina Pelkey, pointed to a previous company statement that said Mr. Jassy “meets with policymakers on both sides of the aisle about policy issues that could affect our customers.” The company declined to make Mr. Jassy available for an interview.
Mr. Bezos’ ambitions in Washington used to be mostly social. His ownership of The Washington Post brought him to the city, where he bought a mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood. But Amazon’s Washington office workers sometimes didn’t know when he was in town. An Amazon team led by Jay Carney, a former White House press secretary, fought to isolate Mr. Bezos from the company’s critics.
Mr. Jassy — who was a Harvard student in the Republican Club and has donated to business-friendly Democrats in recent years — made helping Amazon navigate the regulatory landscape a priority right out of the gate. After Mr. Bezos announced he was stepping down as Amazon’s chief last year, Mr. Jassy convened a group of business leaders for a briefing on the antitrust battle, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.
In August, Mr. Jassy appeared at a White House summit on cybersecurity. In September, he crossed Capitol Hill to meet all four members of the Congressional leadership. He also called on Democratic senators from Washington state, where Amazon is headquartered, and a Republican senator from Tennessee, where the company has expanded its logistics operations.
Some Democrats urged Jassy to let Amazon workers unionize and oppose the state’s abortion restrictions, said a person familiar with the talks, previously reported by Politico. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, told Jassy to focus on building products and steer clear of controversial political and social issues, a person familiar with the meeting said.
A spokesman for Mr McCarthy declined to comment on the meeting.
That same week, Mr. Jassy met with Mr. Klain at the White House, two people with knowledge of the meeting said. They discussed the state of the economy and other matters, one of the people said.
A White House official said Mr. Klain met regularly with chief executives and union leaders, usually by phone but sometimes in person.
The most immediate regulatory threat to Amazon is the proposed US Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prevent major digital platforms from giving preferential treatment to their own products.
One of the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, met with Jassy in Washington in December to discuss China’s influence on technology. At another meeting this year in Seattle, Mr. Warner, he told Mr. Jassy that he was concerned about how Amazon could copy the products of merchants using his website.
Mr. Jassy will be “someone who is likely to be more involved in these policy disputes with DC than Bezos was as a founder,” Mr. Warner said.
Amazon has opposed the legislation, arguing that the company already supports the small businesses that sell products on its site. It has said that if the bill passes, it could be forced to give up the promise of fast delivery at the heart of its Prime subscription service. Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat behind the bill, called the idea that it would “ban” Amazon Prime a “lie.”
Jassy has also discussed Amazon’s opposition to antitrust proposals with lawmakers and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, whom he knew from attending Harvard at the same time, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Jassy told Ms. Raimondo about Amazon’s concerns about new antitrust rules in Europe, which the company believes are unfairly targeting its business, one of the people said. Ms Raimondo has criticized European laws, saying they have a disproportionate impact on US technology companies.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Commerce said Ms Raimondo supported the proposed US antitrust law and had spoken with Mr Jassy. The spokeswoman declined to comment on their conversations.
As Amazon faces the possibility of a federal antitrust lawsuit and continued skepticism about its power, Mr. Jassy could be a strong advocate for the company, said Daniel Auble, a senior researcher at OpenSecrets.
“Not many lobbyists would be able to sit down with — or even get a phone call with — most members of the congressional leadership,” he said. “But the Amazon CEO can, of course, get them all on the phone.”
