Washington, D.C. (15 June)—Our federal agencies, and the commissioners that serve them, should be neutral and impartial arbiters of economic analysis, rather than political bodies trying to change American law. Legislating and lawmaking is and must remain the duty of our congressional representatives, nowhere near the halls of our nation’s agencies. Sadly, the nomination of an activist to the Federal Trade Commission threatens its long-standing impartiality.
So today, NetChoice is disheartened by the Senate’s decision to confirm Lina Khan’s nomination to the Federal Trade Commission.
“Lina Khan’s antitrust activism detracts from the Federal Trade Commission’s reputation as an impartial body that enforces the law in a non-discriminatory fashion. Khan has a strong career in persuading the American left of her proposed reforms to antitrust law, but the job of an FTC commissioner is to enforce antitrust laws as they are, not as the commissioner wishes they would be.” said Carl Szabo, Vice President and General Counsel at NetChoice.
“The consumer welfare standard has driven America’s economic exceptionalism for decades, but Khan can now use her power at the FTC to pursue progressive policy goals that would undo that exceptionalism,” continued Szabo. “Khan’s previous work on the partisan House Judiciary’s Digital Markets Report which proposed radical changes to American antitrust casts doubt on her ability to fairly and neutrally apply our antitrust laws as they stand today.”