The FTC’s Baffling Chinese Affair
In a column last Friday, I noted a spate of matters being rushed through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the final weeks of Lina Khan’s tenure as chair. I was hardly the only one to notice (see the dissenting statements of Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Commissioner Melissa Holyoak on the FTC’s closed Jan. 16 commission meeting).
The internet is now abuzz with reports of even more curious behavior from the commission—namely, that the FTC has been building its antitrust case against Amazon on the strength of testimony from Temu, a Chinese-owned online marketplace that connects customers directly with manufacturers in China and that competes directly with Amazon. It’s a dubious case, and new FTC leadership ought to take a good hard look at the details, and at the question of whether this specific antitrust case is a sensible way to deploy FTC resources.