FTC’s Andrew Ferguson Sounds Like His Predecessor In A Worrisome Way

“Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to see anybody.” Those were the words of polymath thinker, actor, entertainer and director Mike Nichols (1931-2014) at the June 21, 1966 premiere of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Nichols was convinced he’d misfired with the film version of Edward Albee’s highly regarded play about marriage, and raced out of Los Angeles’s Pantages Theatre so as to avoid an audience heaving with Hollywood royalty. Oh well, what did Nichols know? Which is the point, or should be the point when contemplating Andrew Ferguson, President Trump’s newly installed FTC Chair.

When asked by Fox Business’s Edward Lawrence about how he would approach antitrust law, Ferguson sounded quite a lot like his predecessor at the FTC, Joe Biden appointee Lina Khan. Ferguson told Lawrence that over the next few years U.S. businesses can expect “vigorous antitrust enforcement.” As Ferguson sees it, “It’s really important to promote stability and certainty across administrations,” which means the Donald Trump/Ferguson FTC is poised to retain the Biden/Khan antitrust guidelines. But for one problem, or realistically many problems.

Former FTC Chair Khan conducted a relentless war on “big” during her tenure to the detriment of the U.S.’s top businesses, and by extension the U.S.’s small, but up and coming businesses. Khan attacked Amazon, Facebook and Google among other prominent “Big Tech” names when they had the temerity to prosper or acquire promising businesses they aimed to make more prosperous, she blocked the merger of grocery companies Albertson’s and Kroger even though after the merger they would have still only represented 13 percent of the grocery market (Walmart is 22 percent), not to mention her efforts to restrain Illumina from purchasing Grail despite the potential for Grail to detect cancer early and globally through Illumina’s reach, and to the betterment of the world’s poorest who lack hospital access necessary to fight cancer in its advanced stages.

To be clear about what you’ve read, it’s but a snapshot of Khan’s actions as FTC Chair, actions that loomed large in Silicon Valley’s migration to Trump and the Republicans in the presidential election just passed. It raises an obvious question about whether Trump himself is aware of how Ferguson plans to operate the FTC. Let’s hope that what Ferguson promised on Fox Business is walked back rhetorically, but more important, in an actionable sense while in his predecessor’s still warm chair.

After which, it’s useful to point out that in promising to maintain continuity with Khan, Ferguson is engaging in conceit of the perilous kind. His rhetoric implies that in using antitrust as a tool to attack the big and prosperous, that he can centrally plan competitive markets defined by relentless entry of new competitors. Here Ferguson fails twice, and realistically many more times.

For one, to attack the big and prosperous of the moment is for Ferguson to signal to investors seeding tomorrow’s innovators that they can only achieve so much before being restrained by the federal government. Call aggressive antitrust enforcement a tax on investment, and by extension, a tax on progress.

Much worse, Ferguson is presuming that he sees the future of commerce so clearly as to be able to know who is too powerful, who isn’t, and who will prosper “tomorrow” and well beyond. Except that with commerce, tomorrow looks nothing like today precisely because the future of business is the picture definition of opaque.

For evidence of just this, we return to Mike Nichols and the night he left his own premiere early. Brilliant as Nichols was, he thought he had directed a dud. In truth, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a huge hit with the boldfaced names at the premiere, at the box office, and during awards season when it garnered no less than 13 Academy Award nominations.

Nichols had no idea, such that he missed what would have been a glorious night of bouquets thrown his way. It insults Ferguson not one iota that he has no idea about the future of business either. Since he doesn’t he should run from the economy-sapping excesses of Lina Khan, and let markets work.