The FTC’s Last-Ditch Effort to Revolutionize Antitrust
Lina Khan built her name arguing that modern antitrust enforcement was fundamentally broken. Her meteoric rise from law student to chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was fueled by calls to radically restructure how we think about competition. Under her leadership, the FTC spent four years failing to revolutionize antitrust, while succeeding on bread-and-butter cases.
Recently, in the runup to a change in administration, Khan’s FTC was in a mad dash to file cases, including its second Robinson-Patman Act complaint in a month after a 25-year hiatus. Incoming Chair Andrew Ferguson did not even have time to write his dissent before the commission’s press release went out. But rather than demonstrating the promised renaissance of antitrust enforcement, this most recent complaint against PepsiCo. reveals an agency falling back on outdated legal theories and procedural shortcuts.