In February, the committee chair told staff that the agency would follow merger guidelines introduced by his predecessor.
News Analysis
Despite taking office on a deregulation platform, it is unclear how much the federal antitrust law will change under the Trump administration compared to its predecessor.
After President Donald Trump’s victory last November, many analysts expected 2025 to be the year of mergers and acquisitions flags.
A financial advisory firm predicted in December that “anti-trust generosity” from the Trump administration would “reduce barriers to large-scale mergers.”
Previous changes to security guards have not shown an easy path for the merger. Additionally, priorities that exceed traditional consumer welfare standards are being promoted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
While Trump’s appointee Andrew Ferguson, the committee chair, has often criticised the actions taken by his predecessor, Lina Khan, he also shows the important continuity of Khan’s policies in his tenure.
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In February, Ferguson told committee staff that the agency would follow the merger guidelines that Kern introduced.
Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC expanded the scope of scrutiny of the company’s size and market share, not only when assessing mergers and acquisitions.
Many Democrats praised Kern’s approach, as did some Republicans.
Senator Josh Hawley (r-mo.) and then. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was often referred to as “Khanservatives” because he agreed with Khan that US antitrust laws had a broader purpose than protecting consumers from high prices.
Previous FTC critics said it expanded government control over the private industry beyond what it traditionally was.
The continued Biden administration’s antitrust policy by the current committee has destabilized policy experts who are hoping to change direction under the Trump administration.
“To disappoint many in the anti-trust community, Chairman Andrew Ferguson continues the Biden-era Joint Merger Guidelines developed by Biden’s Federal Trade Commission Chairman Lina Kern and Jonathan Canter, the Department of Justice’s Anti-Trust Director.”
“These guidelines are designed to maximize the power of Washington, DC regulators on the market.”
Consumer Welfare Standards
In 2019, then-Trade Chairman Christine Wilson explained, “Under Consumer Welfare Standards, business behavior and mergers are evaluated to determine whether they hurt consumers in the relevant market. In general, anti-trust agencies will not act if the consumer is not harmed.”
Advocates of consumer welfare standards also say that consumer harm is clearly defined and measurable, creating more certainty among businesses about what actions the government opposes.
“Without this standard and reliance on econometrics, antitrust law is no longer a tool to promote efficiency and competition in consumer services. It is a politically preferred target and a weapon that can point in any direction regulators want,” Bolk said.
Big Tech is the main target
Under Khan’s leadership, the Trade Commission has taken a more positive attitude towards high-tech companies such as Alphabet (Google’s parent), Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta (Facebook’s parent).
The trade committee under Ferguson “signs a solid stance on big technology,” Wesley Hodges, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Technology Policy, told The Epoch Times.
“Instead of completely revoking the (merger) guidelines, he saved them within a broader anti-monopoly framework,” Hodges said. The framework focuses on protecting other companies in a centralized industry, he said.
After Trump announced his appointment as chairman, Ferguson said on social media platform X in December that the committee would “end Big Tech’s revenge on competition and freedom of speech.”
“I hope that the desire to be responsible for the great technology that poses harmful, anti-competitive practices will be the driving force behind Ferguson,” Hodges said.
On February 20, a month after Ferguson took office, the FTC began an investigation into whether technology platforms “deny or degrade users’ access to services” due to perspective or political or religious affiliation.
“Tech companies should not bully users,” Ferguson said. “This investigation will help the FTC better understand how these companies violated the law by silence and intimidating Americans to speak their minds.”
As an additional indication of what comes for tech companies under the Trump administration, the DOJ antitrust division appealed on January 30 to block the merger between two wireless networking companies Hewlett Packard and Juniper Networks.
Workers’ Rights and AI
Khan also sought to pilot the committee to defend workers’ rights, including failed efforts to ban employees’ non-competitive contracts.
The committee under Ferguson also continues Khan’s approach to protecting workers, but there are several variations, including a study of corporate diversity policies.
In February, the FTC launched a joint labor task force. It said it targets “deceptive, unfair, and anti-competitive labour market practices” such as “no-porches, unclaimed, non-claimed agreements, non-competitive agreements, fixed wage agreements… and competitive or unlawful adjustments to DEI employment metrics.
However, artificial intelligence is one area where the FTC could grant more room under Khan’s leadership.
“The committee should not directly charge to regulate AI,” Ferguson said in January. “Regulations like this can allow these early technology to be strangled in a cradle or move the development of technology to foreign countries that are hostile to our national interests.
“On the other hand, the committee must remain watchmen of the vigilant race and ensure that large-scale technology existing people do not manage AI innovators in order to blunt the threat of potential competition.”
