Meet Jeff Bezos’ successor and Amazon’s new political conduct

When Jeff Bezos was CEO of Amazon, he took an aloof stance on the company’s affairs in Washington. He rarely pressed lawmakers. He testified only once before Congress, under threat of subpoena.

Andy Jassy, ​​Bezos’ successor, is trying a different approach. Since he became CEO of the company in July 2021, Jassy, ​​54, has visited Washington at least three times to cross the Capitol and visit the White House.

In September, he met with Ron Klain, President Joe Biden’s chief of staff; called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, to lobby against the antitrust legislation and spoke with Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, about Amazon’s new corporate campus in the state.

“He was very inquisitive,” said Kaine, who met Jassy on Capitol Hill in September and spoke to him by phone last month. Jassy bet more on a diplomatic tone than on making an impression by “strength of personality”, according to Kaine, and was prepared with knowledge of the legislator’s duties on the committee.

Jassy’s actions in Washington are the sign of a new era taking shape at Amazon. The executive, who joined the company in 1997 and built its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, followed in Bezos’ footsteps for years and was considered one of his closest advisers. The succession last year was widely seen as a continuation of Bezos’ culture and methods.

But Jassy has quietly put her stamp on Amazon, making more changes than many insiders and company watchers expected.

He delved into key parts of the business that Bezos delegated to advisors, especially logistics operations. He admitted that Amazon overreacted and needed to cut costs, closing its brick-and-mortar bookstores and freezing some warehouse expansion plans. The executive began a tumultuous leadership review. And while he reiterated the company’s opposition to unions, he also struck a more conciliatory tone with the company’s 1.6 million employees.

Bezos’ most glaring difference is perhaps the new CEO’s much more hands-on approach to regulatory and political challenges in Washington.

Jassy has become more involved with scrutiny of Amazon’s larger role as an employer and in society, as well as serving customers, said Matt McIlwain, managing partner at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, which was an early investor in the company.

“I think those kinds of things matter more to Andy,” said McIlwain, who has known Bezos and Jassy for more than two decades. “Jeff has a more libertarian mindset.”

Jassy’s efforts may stem from necessity. Political leaders, activists and academics are taking a closer look at Amazon because of its dominance. The company responded by expanding its Washington lobbying apparatus, spending $19.3 million on federal lobbying in 2021, compared with $2.2 million a decade earlier, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks influence in Washington.

Your challenges are increasing. The Federal Trade Commission, led by legal expert Lina Khan, is investigating whether Amazon violated antitrust laws. Last year, Biden supported Amazon employees looking to unionize; he has since welcomed a union leader from an Amazon warehouse to the Oval Office. And Congress could soon vote on an antitrust bill that would make it harder for Amazon to favor its own brands over those offered by competitors on its website.

Jassy — who was at the Republican Club as an undergraduate at Harvard and has donated in recent years to business-friendly Democrats — has made it a priority from the start to help Amazon navigate the regulatory landscape. After Bezos announced he was stepping down as head of the company last year, Jassy summoned a group of company executives for a briefing on the antitrust fight, two people with knowledge of the meeting said.

Amazon’s most immediate regulatory threat is the Online Innovation and Option Bill, which would prevent major digital platforms from giving preferential treatment to their own products.

One of the Democratic co-sponsors of the bill, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, met with Jassy in Washington in December and discussed China’s influence on the technology. At another meeting this year in Seattle, according to Warner, he told Jassy that he feared Amazon might copy products from merchants using his site.

Jassy “will be someone who is likely to be more involved in these political disputes with the government than Bezos was as a founder,” Warner said.

Amazon has opposed the legislation, arguing that it already supports small businesses that sell products on its website. The company said that if the law is passed it could be forced to abandon the promise of speedy deliveries, the basis of its Prime subscription service. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is behind the bill, called the idea that it would make Amazon Prime “illegal” a “lie.”

As Amazon faces the possibility of a federal antitrust lawsuit and continued suspicion of its strength, Jassy could be a powerful advocate for the company, said Daniel Auble, a senior researcher at OpenSecrets.

“Few lobbyists would be able to sit down, or even get a call from, most members of the leadership in Congress,” he said. “But of course the CEO of Amazon can make them all answer the phone.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves