The FTC’s Bid to Become Powerful
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The FTC’s Bid to Become Powerful
Under its new chair Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission has taken aim at the most influential U.S. tech companies in a bid to usher in a new era of antitrust enforcement.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is tasked with promoting competition in markets and protecting consumers from unfair or deceptive business practices. Under U.S. antitrust law, no company can quash market competition through predatory pricing, monopolistic acquisitions, or other tactics that unfairly crowd out competitors. With about 1200 staff, the FTC is a relatively small agency that has shied away from high-profile antitrust cases in recent years, but since the appointment of 34-year-old agency head Lina Khan in 2021, it has taken aim at some of the most influential tech companies in the world, including Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI.1