When Donald Trump referred to the problem of “the swamp” in Washington, his frustration struck a cord with many Americans. There is a pervading sense that our politicians have been captured by special interests, lobbyists and corporations. But instead of going after anti-consumer behavior or money in politics, Donald Trump went after “globalists” and minorities, with policies that hurt the average American’s bottom line and future. His presidency will increase corruption and inequality. For all that Trump calls for “America First”, it seems like he is really putting himself first, from foreign deals to investigate his political opponents to tax cuts that will benefit him personally. Who actually fought back against corporate power to help the average worker? Lina Khan, head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It’s no wonder that corporate hacks at the Wall Street Journal have published hundreds of hit pieces against her: she threatens their power enough for them to mention her more than twice a week. In the same article, they attack her for being too results-focused in adopting new legal theories and too tradition-focused in enforcing existing antitrust laws.
While the FTC was initially created to fight monopolists using the hammer of antitrust, the board has been expanded by Congress to fight for the consumer against frauds, scams, deceptive practices and anti-competitive mergers. While it layed mostly dormant for decades, Biden’s appointment of a fierce antitrust lawyer, Lina Khan, has revitalized the vigor of the FTC.
While some initial lawsuits against Meta and the Microsoft-Blizzard deal failed, Lina Khan’s new theories of monopolistic competition have found recent success. She has blocked the purchase of ARM by Nvidia, preventing vertical integration that could lock out competition and increase prices for consumer computer hardware Using her expanded theory of antitrust, she won important court cases against the Kroger-Albertsons merger and the acquisition of Micheal Kors, important to stop price-gouging seen in other countries. These actions ensure competitive and fair markets, whose competition wards off exploitative practices, lowers costs and improves product quality for American consumers.
In addition to her antitrust duties, Lina Khan has taken on a variety of other fights to ensure consumer rights take precedence over corporate power and profits. She attempted to block the regular use of non-competes, which can force employees into harmful situations and hurt workers. The FTC has also taken action against companies that surveil intimate information about American lives, fighting back against an unchecked surveillance capitalism that undermines human dignity by limiting data collection. Khan also worked to free repair services from oppressive monopoly control via embracing right to repair, so that major companies such as John Deere and Apple cannot overcharge for repairs in the absence of competition. She has sought to eliminate “subscription traps”, which make it easy to sign up and incredibly hard to cancel, hoping that consumers get frustrated and give up rather than stop these companies’ monthly parasitic leeching; she also passed a bipartisan policy that works to ensure consumers at not bait-and-switched by junk fees. In another policy that stops unfair advertising, Khan banned misleading reviews on e-commerce or social media platforms.
Finally, Khan has even fixed a problem that Donald Trump promised (and failed!) to solve: McDonalds ice-cream machines. While this is not necessarily the largest problem in America, it is an excellent representation of the abuse of corporate power. McDonalds extracts profits by giving one company the power to repair ice cream machines. The Taylor Group is the only one authorized to service these machines, leading to one in seven being offline at a time. The Group has made repair functionally impossible to drive repair orders, which increases the number of outages. At the same time, the Taylor Group cuts staffing to increase profits, which means each individual repair takes longer. McDonald’s customers, franchisees, and independent repairmen lose. The only winners are the leeching Taylor Company and the McDonald’s megacorporation receiving kickbacks. Due to pressure from Khan and the FTC, the U.S. Copyright office granted an exemption that allowed for easier repair and servicing of McDonald’s ice cream machines.
Donald Trump is correct about identifying a problem, but his solutions only exacerbate it. Our politics has been corrupted by a corporatocracy. However, the solution is not to attack minorities or give yet another tax cut that benefits the ultra-rich. We should instead follow the example of Lina Khan, protecting consumers, workers, and small businesses through ensuring fair competition.
