President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Andrew Ferguson as the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
He will replace Lina Khan, who became a lightning rod for Wall Street and Silicon Valley by blocking billions of dollars’ worth of corporate acquisitions and suing Amazon and Meta while alleging anticompetitive behavior.
It was one of several evening announcements Trump made via his social media platform, including that he was naming Mark Meador as a commissioner to the FTC, Kimberly Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece, a longtime supporter who was engaged to his son Don Jr, and ally and former inaugural chairman Tom Barrack as ambassador to Turkey.
Ferguson is already one of the FTC’s five commissioners, which is currently made up of three Democrats and two Republicans.
“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “Andrew will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History.”
The replacement of Khan likely means that the FTC will operate with a lighter touch when it comes to antitrust enforcement. The new chair is expected to appoint new directors of the FTC’s antitrust and consumer protection divisions.
“These changes likely will make the FTC more favorable to business than it has been in recent years, though the extent to which is to be determined,” wrote Anthony DiResta, a consumer protection attorney at Holland & Knight, in a recent analysis.
Deals that were blocked by the Biden administration could find new life with Trump in command.
For example, the new leadership could be more open to a proposed merger between the country’s two biggest supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, which forged a $24.6bn deal to combine in 2022. Two judges halted the merger on Tuesday night.
The FTC had filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this year to block the merger, claiming the deal would eliminate competition, leading to higher prices and lower wages for workers. The two companies say a merger would help them lower prices and compete against bigger rivals like Walmart.
One of the judges said the FTC had shown it was likely to prevail in the administrative hearing.
Yet given the widespread public concern over high grocery prices, the Trump administration may not fully abandon the FTC’s efforts to block the deal, some experts have said.
And the FTC may continue to scrutinize big tech firms for any anticompetitive behavior. Many Republican politicians have accused firms such as Meta of censoring conservative views, and some officials in Trump’s orbit, most notably the vice president-elect, JD Vance, have previously expressed support for Khan’s scrutiny of big tech firms.
Trump named Meador, a former staff member to Utah senator Mike Lee, as an FTC commissioner, a role that he should be comfortable with given his experience with the agency.
Meador is a veteran of the FTC and spent five years at the beginning of his career working on antitrust cases at the agency. He later served for two years at the justice department’s antitrust division before taking a role as the advisor to Lee, the ranking Republican on the Senate antitrust committee. Meador was in the running to be a minority party member on the FTC under Joe Biden.
Barrack, a wealthy financier, met Trump in the 1980s while helping negotiate Trump’s purchase of the renowned Plaza hotel. He was charged with using his personal access to the former president to secretly promote the interests of the United Arab Emirates, but was acquitted of all counts at a federal trial in 2022.
Trump called him a “well-respected and experienced voice of reason”.
Guilfoyle is a former California prosecutor and television news personality who led the fundraising for Trump’s 2020 campaign.
Trump also announced Tuesday that he had selected Jacob Helberg as the next undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, and Dan Bishop as deputy director for budget at the Office of Budget and Management.
For ambassador to Mexico, Trump has picked Ron Johnson, who served as ambassador to El Salvador in Trump’s first term. In a post on Truth Social, Trump congratulated Johnson, saying, “Together, we will put an end to migrant crime, stop the illegal flow of Fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into our Country and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”
