Amazon’s $34 Billion Makes It an ‘Investment Hero,’ Study Says
The e-commerce giant was far and away the leader in U.S. capital spending in 2020, according to a Progressive Policy Institute analysis.
Democratic and Republican politicians alike are dumping on Amazon.com Inc. over its ceaseless expansion—marked most recently by its agreement to buy the movie studio with the roaring lion logo, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, says “they are laser-focused on expanding and entrenching their monopoly power,” while Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, tweets that Amazon “shouldn’t be able to buy anything else. Period.”
But not everybody is mad at Amazon. A new study from the Progressive Policy Institute, which was founded in 1989 as a centrist Democratic think tank and promises “radically pragmatic thinking,” calls Amazon its No. 1 “investment hero.” It estimates that Amazon boosted its U.S. capital spending by 75% in 2020, to $33.8 billion, from the year earlier, which was more than twice that of any other company.