Trump Vows Close Look at Computing Contract Amazon Seeks -- Update
18 Juillet 2019 - 11:27PM
Dow Jones News
By Ryan Tracy
WASHINGTON -- President Trump said he would ask the Pentagon to
scrutinize a cloud-computing contract for the U.S. military, adding
uncertainty to a multibillion-dollar race between contract
finalists Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
"I'm getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the
Pentagon and with Amazon. They're saying it wasn't competitively
bid," Mr. Trump said Thursday in response to a reporter's question
at the White House. "I will be asking them to look at it very
closely to see what's going on."
The president's comments further complicate the award for the
cloud deal, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or
JEDI.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), and others have previously
called for the Pentagon to reopen the bidding process. The contract
is scheduled be awarded by the end of August, the Pentagon has
said, and is valued at up to $10 billion.
The JEDI bidding process has been dogged by allegations of
conflict of interest involving an Amazon employee, but moved closer
to completion earlier this month when a federal judge ruled in the
Pentagon's favor in a lawsuit filed by Oracle Corp.
Amazon and Defense Department officials couldn't immediately be
reached for comment. In the past, the Defense Department has said
there was no impact on the contract-award process, and Amazon has
denied getting any special treatment.
Defense officials have designated Amazon and Microsoft as
finalists for the contract, drawing complaints from Oracle and
International Business Machines Corp. Those concerns appear now to
have reached the president's ear.
"I've had very few things where there's been such complaining,"
Mr. Trump said. "Complaining from different companies, like
Microsoft and Oracle and IBM. We're going to take a look at it,
we'll take a very strong look at it."
A White House spokesman didn't immediately respond to questions
about what the administration might do to further look at the
deal.
Microsoft and Oracle declined to comment. An IBM spokesman said
it has long raised concerns about awarding the contract to a single
vendor.
Before and since his election in 2016, Mr. Trump has leveled a
series of attacks against Amazon -- about everything from the taxes
the online giant collects on sales to its delivery practices. He
also has criticized Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who owns
the Washington Post.
--Catherine Lucey contributed to this article
Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 18, 2019 17:12 ET (21:12 GMT)
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