FTC Chair Wants Trump to Avoid Antitrust ‘Backsliding’

The head of the FTC is imploring the incoming administration to continue her antitrust work.

In an interview with Bloomberg News Thursday (Jan. 9), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan said she has been in discussions with her successor, Republican Commissioner FTC Andrew Ferguson.

“In the merger space, we were able to achieve deterrence because we made clear that we were not going to accept sub-optimal remedies that we thought had a high risk of failure,” she said. “We’ve created a lot of deterrence in the market and it requires enforcers to stay aggressive to not see backsliding there.”

The report also quotes comments by Khan Wednesday (Jan. 8) at the Brookings Institution that Fergunson and the commission’s other Republican member Melissa Holyoak, have voted in favor of every merger lawsuit the regulator has brought since joining the FTC last year.

“There’s plenty of opportunity for areas of the work that we’ve built out” to continue with the new administration, she said.

The report notes that Khan has become a progressive icon, taking over the FTC at 32 after making a name for herself with an article she wrote on regulating Amazon. She also became the target of criticism from Republicans, big business and Big Tech firms after the FTC lost merger challenges involving Meta and Microsoft.

During her tenure, the FTC has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon and shut down megadeals involving Nvidia, Lockheed Martin and Kroger.

In the closing days and weeks of the Biden administration, the FTC has been busy. Last month, the commission filed suit against Southern Glazer’s, the largest liquor distributor in the U.S., accusing it of giving exclusive discounts to big retailers at the expense of smaller businesses.

In addition, the FTC has recently finalized a $7 million settlement with H&R Block, and sued the mobile banking app Dave for deceptive advertising. Dave has said the suit — handed over late last month to the U.S. Justice Department — is based on inaccurate allegations and is an example of “government overreach.”

While it’s not yet clear what antitrust policies the new administration might or might not pursue, Trump has given every indication that he will take a much more relaxed approach to regulations than his predecessor, with a rollback that could extend to the FTC.