Sen. Klobuchar announces at Sen Judiciary antitrust hearing that Lina Khan has been named FTC chair. Trying to confirm with the WH.
"I would also note Sen. Lee that Lina Khan was just named the chair of the FTC, an interesting development from an antitrust standpoint," she said.
Confirmed. Official announcement from the White House TK but sources familiar with the plans say Biden will name Khan as chair.
Sneaky move on the WH's part: some Republicans might have been more likely to oppose her nomination if she was announced as chair rather than commissioner.
Khan will be the first non-white chair of the FTC. The chair has a lot of power over the direction of the agency, what cases or rulemakings it chooses to focus time and money on
I have had some Qs on this. Edith Ramirez (FTC chair under Obama) who identifies as Latina likely qualifies as the first person of color to chair the agency. I was perhaps erroneously trying to distinguish by saying non-white. Khan is the first person of Asian descent to helm FTC
The FTC has historically been populated almost exclusively by White commissioners. In it's 107-year history it has only had 3 Black commissioners EVER. Two Asian commissioners EVER (one of whom is a current commissioner Rohit Chopra)
Before Ramirez, there was another commissioner who identified as Hispanic (Mary Azcuenaga).
In any event, I highlighted this because the Biden administration has sought to have diverse picks and because there's been an effort to push him to diversify his tech picks specifically politico.com/news/2021/01/0…
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This story started it's life as this chart. I wanted to look at how the House bills zoomed in on the companies (ALSO special thanks to @wordsbykam for listening to me ramble on a Friday afternoon and then making it into something understandable)
The Justice Department and the FTC designate “covered online platforms” for enhanced enforcement only if the companies meet certain thresholds: The business’ parent company must have a market value of at least $600 billion -- something only 10 corporations worldwide meet
There's been a lot of antitrust news today. Sen. Mike Lee and Chuck Grassley also dropped their own antitrust overhaul. Here's the one-pager: lee.senate.gov/public/_cache/…
There's stuff in here that's DOA for Dems -- like eliminating the FTC's antitrust jurisdiction and giving it to @JusticeATR. But there are other things that could gain some consensus.
@JusticeATR Civil fines for knowing violations of the antitrust laws of up to 15% of a company's annual revenues for each year in which the violation occurred. That's in line with EU fines, which can be big $ (see Google's $10B or so)
The FTC improperly held that 1-800 Contacts trademark agreements violated the antitrust law, the 2nd Circuit held this AM. They reversed the FTC decision and ordered the complaint be dismissed. Big loss for FTC. More TK.
. @energycommerce voted 30-22 to advance a bill to restore the @FTC ability to seek restitution and disgorgement from companies that break the law in the wake of the Supreme Court's AMG decision that the agency didn't have that authority
Before moving the bill, Democrats defeated, 25-28, an amendment offered by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) that would have reduced to 5 years from 10 years the period of time for which they could seek monetary remedies.
The amendment would also have changed the bill so it would only apply to FTC cases going forward, not any of its pending ones.
Five bills: each covering a slightly different aspect of antitrust/tech platforms.
1) Line of business restrictions. This is the "Glass-Steagall of the Internet" idea that Cicilline has talked up. The legislation takes aim at companies (like Amazon) that operate a dominant platform and promote their own goods or services on it.