Only seven working days remain in the Biden administration, but U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan still hopes to push a few more cases out the door before she leaves.
In an exclusive exit interview with Bloomberg News, Khan urged the incoming administration to continue vigorously enforcing antitrust law and said she has been engaging a lot with her successor – Andrew Ferguson, one of the agency’s Republican commissioners, who President-elect Donald Trump has said he will elevate to chair on Jan. 20.
“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.”
In remarks later Wednesday at the Brookings Institution, Khan noted that Ferguson and her other Republican colleague, Melissa Holyoak, have voted in favor of every merger lawsuit the agency has brought since they joined the agency last spring.
“There’s plenty of opportunity for areas of the work that we’ve built out” to continue in the next administration, she said.
A progressive icon, Khan became the youngest person ever to chair the FTC, taking the helm of the antitrust and consumer protection agency in June 2021 at age 32 after a rise to fame for an article she wrote about how to rein in Amazon.com Inc.
She became a flashpoint for critics of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda, with business groups and billionaires pillorying her after the FTC lost two major merger challenges against Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in her first year.
Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC sued Amazon for monopolization, successfully blocked megadeals involving Nvidia Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Kroger Co., and adopted a rule that would ban non-competes nationwide, though the measure remains mired in litigation. She also helped bring antitrust to the masses appearing on 60 Minutes and becoming one of only two Biden appointees to appear on Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show.’
Last month, the FTC brought the first lawsuit challenging alleged price discrimination since 2000 when it sued Southern Glazer’s, the largest liquor distributor in the US. The case marked a revival of the Robinson-Patman Act, which was once a staple of antitrust enforcement. Such cases were largely abandoned by the FTC and its counterpart at the Justice Department as legal experts argued the law helped drive higher prices.
“There’s certain areas of the law that had been dormant that have now been activated,” she said. “It’s inappropriate for enforcers to ignore categorically laws that Congress has asked us to enforce.”
Both Ferguson and Holyoak voted against the Southern Glazer’s case. But in dissents, both GOP members said they believe the FTC should pursue more price-discrimination cases under the law. Mark Meador, who Trump has said he intends to nominate as the third Republican FTC commissioner, has also advocated for greater Robinson-Patman enforcement.
