Lena Kahn was just 32 years old when Joe Biden appointed her to lead the Federal Trade Commission in 2021.

She became the youngest FTC chair in history, and this agency goes back to 1914.

Khan was also considered one of the most progressive chairs in FTC history.

While she was still in law school, Khan published a journal article called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox,

which went on to become famous and which painted a picture of capitalism gone wild,

where too many firms have become too big and too powerful, posing a threat not just to consumers and employees,

but to the economy itself and maybe even to democracy.

One of the signature achievements of her FTC term done in collaboration with the Department

of Justice was an updated set of the government's merger guidelines.

This is a 50-page blueprint for pushing back against over consolidation, for limiting both

horizontal and vertical acquisitions, and for making the economy more resilient by reducing

corporate power.

These are ideas we have dug into repeatedly on Freakonomics Radio.

We have done episodes about consolidation in the eyeglass industry, in the pet care and dialysis industries.

We made an episode called Our Private Equity Firms Plundering the U.S. economy.

Now with Donald Trump back in the White House, Lena Kahn is, of course, gone, replaced by a Republican chair, Andrew Ferguson, and the Trump administration has been moving quickly to undo or wipe out any number of Biden administration policies. But not those merger guidelines. They are being retained and embraced by the Trump administration.

Here's how one former Biden administration official put it to me. It's like being in your

house when a tornado comes and wipes out everybody's house except for yours. You might call this

the Lena Khan paradox. And how does Khan herself feel about this paradox? Based on the conversation

you are about to hear, I would put it this way. When it comes to antitrust policy,

Khan doesn't care who gets it done as long as it gets done. I view the stakes here as being

existential for our country.

...