Lina Khan’s legacy could prove to be fragile as Trump pick takes helm of FTC

Lina Khan was installed as the US’s top antitrust watchdog with a mandate to turn the page on an era of light-touch enforcement. According to her critics, Khan was a “bully” with “unchecked power”. But, by her reckoning, this new era brought “off the charts” success.

In Silicon Valley and beyond, industry leaders argue she went too far. Some officials inside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complained the agency was hamstrung by mismanagement. And now, as Khan prepares to step down, her successor has made no secret of his plan to break with her agenda.

Allies of Khan, who was appointed by Joe Biden to reset the federal government’s decades-old stance on competition and push back against monopolization, argue that such resistance and criticism were inevitable. Such an abrupt change in tack was bound to put noses out of joint.

Khan, who became FTC chair in 2021, first rose to prominence as a law student when, in early 2017, she published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox – using the online retail giant’s dominance to argue the US had failed to police big business – in the Yale Law Journal.

Her task, after winning plaudits for her analysis, was to take tangible actions that challenged the status quo. Biden and others argued that too much power had been consolidated into the hands of too few companies in too many industries.

Mission accomplished, according to her supporters, who point to breakthroughs including a sweeping overhaul of merger guidelines, designed to meet 21st-century competition concerns, and the revival of a decades-old law, the Robinson-Patman Act, which effectively banned suppliers from selling goods to larger companies at drastically lower rates than smaller, less powerful firms.

There were also significant courtroom victories, like last month’s block on Kroger’s $25bn merger with Albertsons. The chip giant Nvidia abandoned its $40bn bid for Arm, the chip designer, after the FTC sued to block the deal.

While her list of enemies suggests she rattled corporate titans like Amazon and Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook and Instagram, she also won praise from Republican tech skeptics including Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz. Even JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, claimed less than a year ago she was doing a “pretty good job”.

Khan is “the most consequential FTC chairman in at least half a century, if not longer”, claimed Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute. “And history will remember her as such.”

But there were also missteps – such as the agency’s failed bid to block Microsoft’s $69bn (£57bn) deal to buy Activision Blizzard, publisher of mega gaming franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, in the biggest ever tech takeover – and, according to Khan’s critics, plenty of missed opportunities, too.

Even Khan’s advocates acknowledge problems at the FTC early in her tenure. “Was management at FTC perfect circa 2021? I don’t think Lina would say it was,” said Lynn. “Was management at FTC vastly more effective as of December of 2024? Absolutely.”

And yet, some who worked inside the FTC under Khan maintain that many staff were supportive of her policy views, but alienated by her leadership style, and frustrated by her reliance on only a small handful of trusted aides.

A desire to move fast on her key priorities also led some projects to be rushed, and others to be neglected, according to one former FTC official, who compared Khan to a delivery driver speeding to get a pizza to your door in a few minutes. “Sure, it gets to you,” they said. “But it’s a sloppy mess.”

Khan, who was unavailable to sit for an interview with the Guardian, has sought to argue in recent weeks that the margherita pie was, in fact, impeccably presented.

Addressing the Brookings Institution earlier this month, she said the FTC had issued a record number of rules, litigated a record number of cases and “won big victories in court” that led to dozens of mergers being abandoned on her watch. Major lawsuits against Meta and Amazon are now proceeding to trial, she noted.

“There are different ways to measure the success of a government agency like the FTC,” said Khan. “You can count the number of shots it has taken, or how high it has aimed. You can look at its record in court and the legal significance of its wins. You can look at the material impact the agency has had – the tangible benefits that people have seen, and the concrete ways that life is better.

“What’s truly been humbling and astonishing about the FTC’s work is that, by all of these standards, it has been off the charts.”

Her supporters and detractors are nevertheless united in wondering how much of Khan’s record will survive the incoming administration. Donald Trump has tapped Andrew Ferguson, currently one of the FTC’s five commissioners, to lead the agency.

Khan, for her part, has expressed hope that Facebook and Amazon will not be offered a “sweetheart deal” by her successors. “But again, I can’t predict that,” she told CNBC.

While she has pitched her battle to reduce the concentration of corporate power as a largely bipartisan crusade, big questions linger over its fate under Ferguson, whom Trump has declared will be “the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History”.

A memo obtained by Punchbowl News while Ferguson pitched for the role criticized Khan’s “anti-business” record, pledging to end a “war on mergers”, target big tech firms “engaged in unlawful censorship” and “fight back against the trans agenda”.

Ferguson “is going to have to decide whether he is pro-monopoly or pro-business”, said Lynn, who hailed Khan - whom he hired out of college, back in 2011 - as “the most pro-business person” to ever lead the FTC. ​“Being pro-monopoly is being anti-business,” he added.

Ferguson will also have to choose whom he stands up for, and against. When US antitrust officials backed part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI this month, Ferguson said he was glad that “after a multi-year war” against the world’s richest person, and close ally of Trump, the FTC was “defending the interests of an American citizen who is seeking to hold accountable the alleged perpetrators of anticompetitive conduct”.

In recent years the FTC has been governed by a Democratic majority: three Democratic commissioners, including Kahn, and two Republicans, including Ferguson. But Trump has tapped former Senate antitrust aide Mark Meador to replace Khan, creating a Republican majority.

David Schwartz, a former lead investigative attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, said: “Once a Republican majority is in place at the FTC, we are going to all learn very fast how fragile much of Lina Khan’s legacy is.”