President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday named Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, installing a current Republican member of the agency who has promised to ease up on the policing of powerful American companies — except for the biggest technology firms.
Mr. Trump also picked Mark Meador, a former Senate antitrust aide, to join the agency, creating a Republican majority on the five-person commission and squeezing out the current Democratic chair, Lina Khan. Ms. Khan became a political lightning rod for aggressively challenging mergers like Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of görüntü game maker Activision Blizzard, and filing lawsuits to break up tech titans Amazon and Meta.
Mr. Ferguson, a veteran Congressional aide and former Supreme Court clerk, joined the F.T.C. as a minority party member in the spring, and does not need to be confirmed. He recently made inroads with Mr. Trump’s circle and traveled last week to Mar-a-Lago to pitch the president-elect on a vision for the F.T.C., according to a person familiar with the trip.
The agency should continue its strong scrutiny of the dominance of the biggest tech platforms, Mr. Ferguson told members of Mr. Trump’s transition team, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Still, he called for rolling back some of Ms. Khan’s agenda, including ending efforts to regulate artificial intelligence and abandoning tougher standards for mergers.
With the appointment, Mr. Trump is sending an important signal that he plans to change the direction of the agency responsible for policing consumer protection.
Importantly, Mr. Ferguson — and other Trump appointees, including the new Federal Communications Commission chair nominee — have vowed to extend their regulatory scope to target social media sites that police conservative voices. That type of expansion could run up against First Amendment challenges.
