- Donald Trump tapped Andrew Ferguson to replace Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
- Ferguson has vowed to take on Big Tech while paring back the FTC’s recent focus on antitrust.
- Here’s what we know about Ferguson and his priorities so far.
Andrew Ferguson is in as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
As the new leader of the government’s key consumer protection agency, he’ll oversee cases involving unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business practices — and have a major role in the future of Big Tech.
The commissioner, who once clerked for Clarence Thomas, was nominated to the commission by Democratic President Joe Biden in 2023. The staunch Republican has vowed to uphold President Donald Trump’s agenda as Chair, saying in a December statement that, under Trump’s leadership, “American businesses will become stronger and more competitive, and will better serve workers and consumers, than ever before.”
“At the FTC, we will end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech,” Ferguson said in his statement, thanking Trump. “We will make sure that America is the world’s technological leader and the best place for innovators to bring new ideas to life.”
Representatives for FTC declined to comment when reached by Business Insider. Here’s what we know about Ferguson and his priorities as he leads the commission.
FTC moves under Ferguson
While the FTC’s agenda under Trump is just getting underway, Alden Abbott, a former general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission who is familiar with Ferguson’s thinking, told Business Insider he expects the commission under Ferguson’s leadership to focus on traditional enforcement approaches at the agency and, in most cases, stop pursuing former chair Lina Khan’s expansive rulemaking arguments about consumer harm, which were seen by some as pushing the limits of established antitrust legal precedent and drew ire from some conservatives.
“He’s smart,” Abbott said. “I think he views himself as a conservative lawyer who believes in a strong executive reading in the text of a statute, textualism, and separation of powers. He fits the mold of the elite Federalist Society type of lawyer. So I think you’re going to get a pretty aggressive FTC on things like antitrust — consumer protection, maybe, but I think you’ll you’ll see less rulemaking.”
Since Trump took office, the FTC under Ferguson has moved to block Tempur Sealy’s proposed $4 billion acquisition of Mattress Firm, proposed a $4.9 million fine against a payment processing company, accusing it of deceptive business practices, and filed a lawsuit against the three largest prescription drug benefit managers for “engaging in anticompetitive and unfair rebating practices that have artificially inflated the list price of insulin drugs,” according to case proceedings.
Under his tenure as chair, Ferguson will oversee the illegal monopolization claims against four major US tech companies — Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta — brought by the FTC and the Department of Justice.
Abbott said he expects Ferguson to continue pursuing these cases, though he doesn’t anticipate the FTC under his leadership will seek major breakups of the big firms as potential remedies. Instead, Abbott said, he expects Ferguson to seek policy or contract changes to remedy antitrust concerns.
“One unknown is that Ferguson has said he’s concerned about the politicization of these platforms and concerned about the government coercing platforms or working with platforms to engage in political censorship; stuff like that,” Abbott said. “Those would be rather novel cases under existing antitrust laws. And I don’t know how he’d want to pursue those, but I do think he’s going to — he said he wants to be a vigorous enforcer.”
Keen alignment with the Trump administration
Since Trump announced Ferguson’s appointment as chair of the FTC, Ferguson has made clear his willingness to advance the Trump administration’s priorities.
In posts on X, Ferguson praised Trump’s nomination of Mark Meador to fill an empty commissioner seat at the FTC, and highlighted his readiness to “implement President Trump’s agenda” at the agency.
Do you work for the FTC? Contact the reporter with tips at ktangalakislippert@businessinsider.com
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Ferguson announced that the FTC, under his leadership, would enthusiastically comply with Trump’s order to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in government offices.
“DEI is a scourge on our institutions,” Ferguson said in a post on X in late January. “President Trump promised the American people that he would end it. He has done so in three amazing executive orders. Under my leadership, the FTC is doing its part to end the DEI plague. We are done with DEI at the FTC. No DEI office, no DEI influence on hiring, no DEI programming. It is over.”
Ferguson led the FTC in closing the commission’s DEI office, placing all employees within that office on administrative leave, and removing materials promising DEI on the commission’s website.
He also ordered a review of all FTC contracts, an internal audit of the commission’s office, and a review of previous commission orders “to ensure that the Biden Administration’s DEI dictates did not make their way into formal Commission decisions,” an FTC press release related to the decision read.
Ferguson’s alignment with Trump has already ruffled the feathers of the democrat appointee on the commission. Commissioner Alvaro M. Bedoya, another Biden nominee, dissented from Ferguson’s anti-DEI initiative with a statement that criticized Ferguson’s first official move as chair, reading: “Chairman Ferguson could have done any number of things to actually lower the cost of living and create opportunities for American businesses and workers. He did none of them. Instead, he cancelled ‘DEI.'”
Former Supreme Court clerk turned solicitor general
According to his FTC biography, the Virginia native earned his undergraduate degree and law degrees from the University of Virginia, one of the top 10 law schools in the country.
After law school, Ferguson served as a clerk for Judge Karen L. Henderson on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and, from 2016 to 2017, for US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He also practiced antitrust law at several prominent Washington D.C. law firms, where he represented private clients in litigation, before pivoting to more prominent roles in government.
Ferguson served as chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky from 2019 to 2021, before being selected in 2022 to serve as a solicitor general of Virginia. There, he oversaw appellate litigation, represented the southern state before the Supreme Court, and defended Virginia’s laws from constitutional challenges.
After his 2023 nomination to the FTC by the Biden administration — as part of Biden’s initiative to include bipartisan nominations to key offices — Ferguson was unanimously confirmed to serve as one of the agency’s five commissioners. He took office in March 2024, with a six-year term scheduled to end in September 2030.
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