Lina Khan’s Reflections: Outgoing FTC Chair is Confident That Agency’s ‘Durable’ Wins During her Tenure Will Outlast Trump’s Policies 

Outgoing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is confident that the scrutiny against Big Tech will endure as President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees take over the federal anti-trust agency.With less than a week left for the Biden Administration to leave the White House, Khan has been reflecting on some of FTC’s biggest accomplishments and the legacy she will be leaving behind. Speaking to journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media organization Zeteo, Khan also talked about how the FTC’s wins during her tenure are “durable” and could outlast the Trump administration’s policies.

“I think our record speaks for itself,” Khan told Hasan. “I think all of the ways that we are delivering enormous benefits for the American people speaks for itself, and I’m just enormously proud of the just win after win that we’ve been able to deliver for the American people.”

President-elect Trump has nominated attorney Mark Meador as the new chair of the FTC. Until he is confirmed, current Commissioner Andrew Ferguson will serve as chair. Last month, Ferguson said he will investigate “anticompetitive cartels that facilitate or promote censorship” and consider whether to “bust them up,” according to The Washington Post.

Khan told the publication that “despite obvious ideological differences,” she expects Republican and Democratic enforcers alike “to keep up the pressure against the most powerful tech companies” on issues such as artificial intelligence and competition online. “You have big bipartisan coalitions with major actions against companies like Google, and so I fully expect that that scrutiny will remain,”she told The Washington Post.

Khan, who was just 32 when she was appointed to her post in 2021, has often been described as the most ambitious, compelling, and controversial antitrust thinker in a generation. Under her leadership, the FTC took on a more active antitrust and consumer protection role, which was largely successful and sometimes controversial.  She has has gone head-to-head with some of America’s most powerful companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Kroger. Along with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, the FTC, under Khan, has blocked dozens of deals in recent years, citing concerns that excessive consolidation undermines competition. During her tenure, Khan has been able to unite Americans across political lines for the FTC’s anti-monopoly work and has produced populist policies that the Biden administration can be proud of.

The Post notes that throughout her tenure as chair, Khan has “largely steered clear of more politically divisive issues such as content moderation on social media and instead sought to build momentum for her efforts to check corporate consolidation.”

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But in October, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee issued a scathing report on Khan’s time as chair. Under her leadership, the FTC  “singular purpose” has been “to impose left-wing ideology over American markets and companies.”  The authors of the report accused her os abusing her authority at the agency, “trampling on the due process rights of regulated parties, upending the rule of law, and violating ethics standards she is bound to uphold.” They found that Khan has “consistently betrayed the obligation of the commission to be an independent, bipartisan agency,” the letter said. “Rather than fulfill her obligation to ensure the commission adheres to its independent role, Khan has subordinated the agency to the political will, direction and leftist ideology of the Biden-Harris Administration,6 its allies in Congress, and activist entities,” the letter said. The committee also found that Khan has “resorted to means outside the FTC’s legal mandate to realize her desired ends, including through collusion with foreign regulatory regimes.”

However, Republicans, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have praised her enforcement actions against Big Tech, according to The Post. 

Although Khan’s time as chair expired on Sept. 25, 2024, she remains in the post till Jan. 20.