FTC Eases Standards For Competition Lawsuits

FTC

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted to rescind a 2015 policy statement that hampered its ability to file antitrust lawsuits, effectively lowering the bar for such actions.

That 2015 statement will now be done away with in favor of a new goal for the “promotion of consumer welfare.”

As noted in a Reuters report, the open meeting was conducted online, and the group was split, with Republicans reportedly voting against withdrawal of the statement and Democrats voting for it.

Chair Lina Khan said the agency was withdrawing its old statements on consumer welfare, to go along with “the meaning of Section 5 and apply it to today’s market,” per the news outlet.

The commission also voted on party lines to tighten the rules on those who can say their goods were made in the U.S. They also voted 3-2 on rules on who would see streamlined investigations including probes of Big Tech, healthcare, the COVID-19 response and other such things.

Khan took the seat in June and has changed things so votes are held in public. But two Republican commissioners, Christine Wilson and Noah Phillips, said they’d only heard of the rule changes recently and so they’d fallen short of true transparency. They also said the new steps could end up placing things in jeopardy of Congressional intervention.

In separate news, the White House is looking at preparing its own executive order on antitrust enforcement and is asking agencies to look at how their actions impact competition.

The new laws are likely to go after big names like Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as executives in industries like banking and airlines.

According to a source, the new legislation would be looking to expand on the 2016 report on White House Council of Economic Advisers, with the intention to boost competition in the economy. This will include doing away with noncompete agreements for workers and boosting the ability for farmers to fight off harmful agreements.