Trump’s pick to lead the FTC says he wants to battle Big Tech over free speech
Ferguson has vowed to pare back the FTC’s recent anti-trust agenda.
In his pitch to become the next chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson touted his loyalty to President-elect Donald Trump, his distaste for Big Tech’s content moderation, and his commitment to roll back current chair Lina Khan’s “anti-business agenda.”
The effort was apparently successful, as Trump announced on Tuesday evening that the 38-year-old lawyer will lead the FTC. Ferguson is expected to take a different approach than Khan, rolling back her stricter rules and frequent challenges to mergers. Yet the current and future FTC leaders share a commitment to going after Big Tech, though come at the issue from different angles. Khan has sued companies for allegedly abusing monopoly power, while Ferguson is more focused on what he sees as censorship of conservative voices online.
“Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social announcing his selection. Ferguson thanked Trump with his own post on X, vowing to “end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech.”
Trump also announced that Mark Meador, a former antitrust aide in the Senate, will join the FTC. If confirmed, Meador will create a Republican majority at the five-person commission and push out Khan.
Ferguson received undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia. He went on to work at private law firms on antitrust cases, clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and serve as an aide to Republican senators, including a stint as chief counsel to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Most recently, he was Virginia’s solicitor general.
Since joining the FTC in April, Ferguson has dissented from some of the agency’s enforcement decisions. He recently signaled support for a case that Elon Musk’s company X brought against an advertising industry group, alleging some advertisers wrongly boycotted the site.
When Ferguson tried to sell himself to Trump, his written pitch mentioned his “proven loyalty to President Donald Trump, and a track record of standing up to Big Tech Censorship, DEI-wokeism, and the anti-business, anti-innovation agenda of the radical left,” as was first reported by Punchbowl. Among other priorities, he listed ending attempts to regulate AI and fighting against bureaucracy that slows down the president-elect’s plans. Paring back federal bureaucracy is a primary focus of Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency.
On an episode of The Dynamist podcast in November, Ferguson said that he’s started to think big social media companies have a liberal bias and indicated that the FTC should let AI develop before trying to regulate the industry.
“Comprehensive federal regulation of AI today would be like passing the Federal Aviation Act three days after Kitty Hawk,” he said on the episode, referencing the first successful airplane.
During her tenure as chair, Khan pursued an aggressive antitrust agenda and generally drew the ire of Wall Street. She has sued Amazon and Meta and blocked various mergers, including that of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons. Her term has expired but she can stay on as chair until Ferguson takes her place.
As a sitting commissioner, Ferguson doesn’t need Senate confirmation. A representative for Ferguson did not immediately respond to B-17 request for comment and representatives for Trump provided his statement on Truth Social announcing Ferguson as chair.
