MIKE DAVIS: Trump's man at Federal Trade Commission delivers major wins
A year into his tenure and despite what his feckless critics claim, President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson is delivering monumental wins for competition and consumers.
I’ve known Ferguson for years. He’s a friend, a former colleague and exactly the kind of fighter President Trump promised to put in charge of the administrative state. And unlike the typical Washington bureaucrat, Ferguson isn’t interested in academic exercises, he’s interested in results. In just one year, he’s returned $3.2 billion to consumers, more than during the entire Biden administration.
Ferguson is delivering on President Trump’s agenda: lowering costs for American families, restoring competition, bringing back merit-based hiring, and taking on the entrenched monopolies that rigged our economy for decades.
For too long, trillion-dollar corporations – especially in Big Tech – have used their market power to crush competition, shutter small businesses and silence conservatives. Republicans are used to talking about this problem. Ferguson is actually doing something about it.
Under his leadership, the FTC opened inquiries into whether platforms like Meta engage in practices such as "shadow banning" or viewpoint-based restrictions that may violate consumer protection and competition laws. At the same time, he has directly pressed dominant gatekeepers, including Google and Apple, warning that search bias and curated products like Apple News could expose them to liability if they mislead users about neutrality while exercising editorial control.
His tenure has also included major consumer protection actions, including the FTC’s $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon. And he’s put companies across the sector on notice that complying with foreign censorship regimes or quietly suppressing lawful speech may run afoul of the FTC Act. This administration is sending a clear message to Silicon Valley: the era of consequence-free empire building is over. This is what real antitrust law enforcement looks like.
Under Ferguson’s leadership, the FTC is driving down costs across critical sectors of the economy. In healthcare, he’s acting aggressively to protect patients from anticompetitive behavior that drives up prices. The FTC secured a landmark settlement to lower drug costs for American patients, blocked anticompetitive medical device mergers, and launched a healthcare task force to root out consolidation that hurts consumers.
This is what President Trump promised: lower prices, more competition and better outcomes for American families.
Ferguson is also going after illegal no-hire agreements that suppress wages and trap workers. He’s stopping mergers that would raise prices on everyday goods, from construction materials to medical devices. And he’s taking on housing-related collusion, including cases against companies like Zillow and Redfin for allegedly suppressing competition in rental advertising.
The FTC is putting a stop to unfair and anticompetitive bias against conservatives and conservative media, addressing antitrust concerns against advertisers to prevent collusion or coordination based on political or ideological viewpoints. And after decades of racist DEI and affirmative action policies pushed on the American people, the FTC is doing its part to aggressively scrutinize these practices, especially in hiring, using the agency’s antitrust and competition law authorities. In a step toward restoring sanity, the FTC also launched an inquiry into how Americans may have been exposed to fake and scientifically unsupported claims about so-called "gender-affirming care," especially as it relates to children.
These are key promises of President Trump’s 2024 campaign that his FTC is fulfilling.
Ferguson understands that he works for the president of the United States – and through him, for the American people. He understands that the FTC is not an unaccountable independent agency, and it isn't supposed to be a passive observer while markets get rigged. It’s meant to be an active enforcer of the law under the direction of the president.
We’re seeing historic enforcement actions, record-setting cases and a sustained streak of victories against anticompetitive conduct. Whether it’s halting major mergers, securing record settlements that deliver real relief to consumers or pushing forward in blockbuster litigation against Big Tech, this FTC is getting results at a level we haven’t seen in years.
If conservatives dismantle Big Government only to hand power over to giant monopolies, we haven’t solved the problem; we’ve just changed who’s in charge. Concentrated power without competition, whether in government or in the market, hurts the American people. President Trump’s FTC is making sure we don’t replace one form of unaccountable power with another.
Under President Trump and Ferguson, we’re finally moving in the right direction. Critics from a bygone era of a Republican Party led by the Chamber of Commerce’s big-business-first, America-last faction will complain, as they always do. They’ll say this administration’s approach is too aggressive, too disruptive, too political. What they really mean is they don’t like being held accountable.
Too bad.
The American people deserve better. They deserve lower prices, more choices, and a level playing field for America’s entrepreneurs and small businesses. President Trump and Ferguson are delivering. He’s Trump’s all-star antitrust enforcer, bringing the fight to Big Tech, drug middlemen and corporate cartels. And he’s producing real, measurable wins for consumers and for the country.
That’s what leadership looks like. That’s what results look like. And that’s why Ferguson is one of the most effective leaders in President Trump’s administration today.