Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, AGENCY NEWS: Holyoak, Simington, Pai discuss path ahead for FTC, FCC, (Mar 26, 2025)

By Jeff Williams, TR Daily

Holyoak defended Trump’s FTC Commissioner firings and said the agency should “get the hell out of the way” if it sees no violation of the antitrust laws.

As the second Trump administration gets under way, the priorities for the Federal Trade Commission and FCC should include focusing on consumer protection, speeding up regulatory processes, and not slowing innovation, panelists said today during a discussion at a Free State Foundation event on March 25, 2025.

Citing similar views expressed by Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson earlier in the day, Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Melissa Holyoak said that the agency needs to “robustly enforce” antitrust laws, but “if we don’t think there’s a violation, we need to get the hell out of the way.”

The FTC should also “double down” on its efforts to combat fraud against consumers, she said.

“I think it’s really important [to] view our anti-fraud work as part of a pro-growth agenda,” Commissioner Holyoak said.

Ms. Holyoak also stressed the importance of a regulatory environment in which the FTC provides “clear guidance to markets,” adding: “When we lack clear guidance, when there is a failure to provide clear guidance to the markets, what we see is a depression of investment and... a depression of innovation. And it’s just not good for consumers. It’s not good for competition.”

The commissioner also noted her support for the FTC’s inquiry seeking comment about “technology platform censorship” and whether social media companies are improperly “deplatforming and silencing” their users.

The FTC is “gathering that information and understanding the harms there, and trying to figure out how to address those is going to be an important part of what we do,” she said.

Among other topics, Ms. Holyoak defended President Trump’s action to fire Democratic Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, a move both of them have argued was illegal.

The “power of the executive is with President Trump and President Trump lawfully exercised his constitutional authority in removing Commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya,” she said.

Calling artificial intelligence “an area that we’re obviously paying great attention to,” Ms. Holyoak said it is “critical that we understand what’s happening here, that we understand the markets and the players.”

The FTC should “remain absolutely vigilant, both on the competition side and on the fraud side,” but should also ensure that “as far as innovation goes, that we’re getting the heck out of the way.”

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington expressed concerns about data privacy and fraud, saying: “If there’s anything Americans don’t trust, it’s the integrity of their data.”

The implementation of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark will “raise the bar pervasively throughout all civilian applications” to instill consumer confidence in data security, he said.

Mr. Simington also advocated for improvements in FCC processes so that the agency “does not become a chokepoint and a needless drag sail on what the boundless creativity of the American people is yielding out.”

Mr. Simington also said it is “hard to argue that the FCC’s public interest standard is either predictable or a timeless, perfect, finished piece of perpetual wisdom. I think we definitely need to be asking ourselves to what degree should the public interest be an unpredictable encumbrance on a forward-looking basis and what is, in fact, the public interest that we’re trying to vindicate and can that be articulated in a clear way to people, other than the [Federal Communications Bar Association] lifers.”

Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a partner at Searchlight Capital who is slated to become the president and chief executive officer of CTIA April 1, questioned, among other things, the need for mergers to be reviewed by multiple agencies.

“I think it would be helpful, especially to the American public, to have a single standard of review administered by a single agency, based on criteria that are open, published, transparent, understandable, and consistent with basic economics,” he said. “I don’t think in the 21st century that’s too much to ask.”

News: Antitrust ConsumerProtection FederalTradeCommissionNews