By Natalie DeCoste
One of Big Tech’s biggest critics, Lina Khan, has been named the Federal Trade Commission chair by President Joe Biden. Khan’s appointment is a signal that the antitrust hammer may be coming down on Big Tech.
President Biden announced the decision on June 15 following Khan’s confirmation by the Senate earlier that day. The Senate voted 69 to 28 across party lines to confirm Khan as a commissioner of the FTC.
“It is a tremendous honor to have been selected by President Biden to lead the Federal Trade Commission. I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse. I’m very grateful to Acting Chairwoman Slaughter for her outstanding stewardship of the Commission,” said Khan in a statement released on the FTC’s website.
Before her appointment to the FTC and becoming the Chair, Khan was an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. She also served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, was the legal adviser to FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and the legal director at the Open Markets Institute.
Khan helped lead a House Judiciary antitrust probe of the tech industry, which created a massive report accusing Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google of abusing their dominance in various markets. Since the report’s release, House lawmakers have proposed five bills based on the report’s recommendations that aim to rein in Big Tech or, in some cases, require them to break up their businesses.
During her time at Open Markets Institute, Khan became a progressive leader in the movement known as “hipster antitrust.” Her appointment to the FTC has been expected since early March as President Biden was expected to seek a change to the FTC’s approach to Big Tech.
Before President Biden got the opportunity to announce Khan’s appointment, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) stole his thunder and seemingly announced the appointment during a Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing Tuesday afternoon.
With her appointment as Chair of the FTC, Khan now can control the agency’s agenda, staff, and proceedings. She essentially serves as the agency’s chief executive while the other commission members, two Democrats and two Republicans, will work alongside her, voting on major issues and producing statements.
Her role will include voting on enforcement matters in areas of competition and consumer protection. Khan will likely have to deal with whether companies have effectively secured their customers’ data or misled consumers with deceptive marketing to influence their choices online through calculated designs.
Khan indicated how she will handle her time at the FTC during her April confirmation hearing.
“One that comes up across the board is that the ability to dominate one market gives companies, in some instances, the ability to expand into adjacent markets,” Khan said during her hearing.
