FTC Chief Andrew Ferguson on the Trump Vision for Antitrust

Odd Lots

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4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

When Donald Trump won in November, one of the things that Wall Street was excited about was an expected liberalization of merger rules. There was a popular view that under Chair Lina Khan, the Biden FTC was overly stringent about what deals it would let go through, and that the new administration would give the greenlight more often. But at least so far, reality hasn't proven to be so simple. There hasn't been a big merger wave yet. And, in fact, the FTC under new Chair Andrew Ferguson has decided to keep the merger guidelines that Khan put in place. So does this mean continuity? At a live episode of the podcast taped in Washington DC, we spoke with Ferguson about the Trump administration's vision for antitrust. He talked about his philosophy of keeping corporate power in check and the tests he's using to preserve a competitive environment. He also walked us through the long history of the FTC and the notion of consumer welfare, plus why he thinks a more expansive interpretation of the term (beyond just lower prices) is in keeping with the history of conservative legal thought.

Read More: New DOJ Antitrust Chief Builds Team From Prior Administrations
Trump’s FTC Moves Ahead With Broad Microsoft Antitrust Probe

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1:00.6	Bloomberg Audio Studios.
1:03.1	Podcasts, Radio, News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall.
1:21.3	And I'm Tracy Allaway. We got a special episode for listeners today.
1:25.3	We do. A very special episode. We had a live event over in
1:29.9	Washington, D.C. It was a very cool event, Joe. It's really fun. It's been a while. You know,
1:35.2	we do live events. We do live recordings from time to time. It'd been a while since we like put
1:40.0	out a full evening of programming, a full, a full show, if you will. Well, also our first show in D.C.
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