The Trump Administration Was Lying About Antitrust Enforcement ⇥ techdirt.com

Last time I checked in on how the second Trump administration was going to approach the globally-relevant business of antitrust enforcement, I was cautiously optimistic. Some key trust-busting suits were filed under the first Trump administration and, while sloppy, there seemed to be seeds planted for a continuation of a more active FTC. I knew this administration would be catastrophic, and even my tiny speck of optimism was misplaced.

Josh Sisco, of Bloomberg, in a profile of FTC chair Andrew Ferguson:

His concerns, too, may also be resolved with more novel compromises. In May Ferguson launched an investigation into ad agencies, alleging that they colluded in politically motivated ad boycotts, a bugbear of conservative media and X.com owner Elon Musk in particular.

Shortly after, the FTC signed off on Omnicom Group’s $13.5 billion buyout of rival Interpublic, a tie-up that would create the world’s biggest ad agency. To secure the regulator’s approval, the two groups promised they wouldn’t engage in any such boycotts in the future, but made no economic concessions.

That deal may prove to be a template for the FTC under Ferguson. By focusing attention on the alleged ad boycotts and leaving the underlying businesses untouched, the terms appealed to the MAGA faithful and corporate interests.

Sisco can call this a “novel compromise” all he wants, but this is nothing more than a perverted gift. Under Khan, Ferguson also objected to the FTC’s involvement in regulating non-compete agreements, saying it was an overreach for the commission, but has used his power under the Trump administration to go after transgender care because of course he has.

Karl Bode, of Techdirt, has been keeping tabs on how they have been faring on matters of competition:

That was, unsurprisingly, all bullshit. Six months into Trump’s second term and it has been a nonstop nightmare for consumer protection, corporate oversight, labor law, regulatory independence, and already underwater activist battles against media consolidation and monopoly power.

[…]

The only remaining remnants of Lina Khan’s antitrust legacy has been the fact that the Trump administration hasn’t killed several of her prominent antitrust cases against tech giants like Meta and Google. But again, this isn’t because Trump wants to genuinely rein in corporate power, it’s because he wants to maintain leverage over companies that control the flow of online information.

As I wrote over the weekend, this administration has kneecapped the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, one of the few checks on overreaches by the country’s federal government. All of these things have international implications. That board, for example, is responsible for the court that handles privacy complaints from Europeans. The merger of those two ad agencies means less competition worldwide. But Ferguson has affirmed the key conservative pillars of being supposed victims of the world around them and doing harm to trans people. That is his job, apparently. Being a trustbuster? Not so much.