(Dec 11): President-elect Donald Trump has selected Andrew Ferguson, a Republican member of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to serve as the agency’s chair, a politically charged role currently held by Lina Khan.

“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting freedom of speech in our great country,” Trump said in a statement posted to his Truth Social network on Tuesday evening. “Andrew will be the most America first, and pro-innovation FTC chair in our country’s history.”

Ferguson, one of two Republicans at the five-member antitrust and consumer protection agency, joined the FTC in April. Before that, he served as Virginia’s solicitor general, representing the state in key lawsuits.

As an FTC commissioner, Ferguson has dissented from several of Khan’s rule-making efforts, including a ban on non-compete clauses in employment contracts and rules to make it easier to cancel subscriptions.

The FTC is one of two enforcers, alongside the Justice Department’s antitrust division, responsible for overseeing federal competition law and policy. It is the country’s leading consumer protection agency and de facto technology regulator, taking action against digital privacy abuses, advertising fraud and other deceptive conduct. The two government bodies share jurisdiction over reviewing mergers and investigating and acting against companies regarding monopolistic practices.

Under President Joe Biden, the FTC and the antitrust division faced intense criticism from much of corporate America for what it saw as hindrances to making deals. 

At the same time, Khan and her Justice Department counterpart Jonathan Kanter were cheered on by progressives including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, as well as some on the right such as Vice President-elect JD Vance, over their aggressive stance against concentrated corporate power, particularly in the technology industry.

While a second Trump administration may be friendlier to mergers and acquisitions, it is likely to keep up the aggressive pursuit of antitrust cases targeting tech giants. Major cases against Alphabet Inc’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc that are now winding their way through the courts were filed in the first Trump administration, while investigations started then also yielded lawsuits against Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc as well as financial services companies such as Visa Inc.

A Republican-led FTC is likely to pull back on the agency’s rule-making efforts, a priority under Khan that GOP members have opposed. Though it would be a drastic and unlikely move, a Trump administration could simply drop any Biden-era cases it doesn’t like. 

On Tuesday, Trump also selected Mark Meador, a former staffer to Utah Senator Mike Lee, to be an FTC commissioner. Meador is a veteran of both the FTC and the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and spent three years advising Lee, the ranking Republican on the Senate antitrust subcommittee. Meador also worked alongside Kanter at Paul Weiss.

Khan, a Columbia University law professor and former congressional staffer, has held the job since spring 2021 and proved a hard-driving progressive champion. Now, Ferguson will have to navigate between competing interests within the Republican Party, with populist regulatory hawks like Vance pitted against establishment conservatives in business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce. Antitrust has been a key part of that clash.

Last week, Trump picked Gail Slater, an economic policy adviser to Vance, to head up antitrust enforcement at the DOJ.

Ferguson has been highlighting in recent FTC actions his adversarial stance to perceived censorship by large tech companies. In an opinion supporting a settlement over an online sneaker seller’s misleading terms of service, he called for an investigation into tech platforms “for banning users and censoring content”.

In that opinion he expressed support for Elon Musk’s ownership of the social media platform X, saying “its current turn toward free expression is due only to its new owner’s unusually firm commitment to free and open debate”. He added that if an “investigation reveals anti-competitive cartels that facilitate or promote censorship, we ought to bust them up”.

Musk, the world’s richest person, is a prominent Trump supporter and has been tapped by the president-elect to lead an effort to cut government spending alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Before becoming Virginia’s top appellate lawyer, Ferguson was an aide to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, where he was responsible for judicial confirmations, including that of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. He previously worked for Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

After law school, Ferguson clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Uploaded by Tham Yek Lee