US: Minority leader recommends FTC commissioner

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) recommended May 9 that President Donald Trump tap consumer advocate Rohit Chopra to serve as a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

Chopra is a senior fellow at Consumer Federation of America and previously worked at the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Schumer’s initiative may prompt the Trump Administration to bring the commission up to full strength.

Republican Maureen K. Ohlhausen and Democrat Terrell McSweeny are the present FTC commissioners. President Trump Jan. 25 selected Ohlhausen to be the commission’s acting chairman. Schumer may get a chance to recommend another Democrat for FTC commissioner, as McSweeny’s term expires in September.

“Traditionally the Senate defers to the opposition’s party selection for an FTC commissioner,” D. Reed Freeman, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP in Washington and co-chair of the firm’s cybersecurity, privacy and communications practice, told Bloomberg BNA May 9.

If Trump accepts Schumer’s recommendation and Chopra is confirmed by the Senate, he would join a small group of FTC commissioners who aren’t attorneys. The last commissioner who wasn’t an attorney was Orson Swindle, who served on the commission until June 2005. The last non-attorney chairman was Janet D. Steiger, who left the commission in September 1997.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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