Ted Cruz puts FTC in its place

OPINION:

In America, we strive to uphold a free market that’s fair and open to all. We don’t want the government to intervene to pick winners and losers. The only time we expect the government to intervene is when corporate giants unfairly rig the market in their favor.

The Federal Trade Commission is one of those tools designed to ensure fairness in the marketplace. But the FTC under President Biden is failing in that mission. The commission, led by Biden appointee Lina Khan, colludes with corporate giants to diminish consumer power and undermine free market principles. And it’s all being done under the guise of promoting “progressive” values.

One of Ms. Khan’s first acts as FTC chairwoman was to revoke the consumer welfare standard. This standard guided the agency in how it viewed business practices. The government would intervene only if corporate actions were directly harming consumers.

But Ms. Khan doesn’t believe that should be the guiding principle. She favors a “woke” model that lends itself to more government intervention. The new reasons for intervention include Ms. Khan’s belief that a company is too big, or that a company has failed to uphold environmental, social and governance policies or union demands.

This change in the FTC’s standard has raised the ire of Republican lawmakers, who wonder if the change undermines “the fairness of America’s antitrust enforcement regime.”

For one, Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, is concerned that the FTC’s new standards may impose onerous foreign regulations on American companies.

The FTC recently met with European Union officials on how the U.S. agency can implement that foreign body’s laws. The laws in question are the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, both of which are designed to make tech companies even more cumbersome and censorious.

Mr. Cruz decried this move over the summer, saying it violates American sovereignty. He said that Ms. Khan’s “collusion with foreign governments not only undermines U.S. sovereignty and Congress’ constitutional lawmaking authority but also damages the competitiveness of U.S. firms and could negatively affect the savings of millions of Americans who hold stock in those companies via retirement savings accounts and pension plans.”

Ms. Khan’s collusion with the EU is not about helping the consumer. It’s about increasing government power to regulate what you see on the internet. It’s no surprise that a far leftist like Ms. Khan would want the same far-leftist policy for the United States.

Mr. Cruz has pointed out that another potential victim of Ms. Khan’s radical policies is pharmacy benefit managers, known as PBMs.

PBMs are third-party operators that negotiate drug prices with the big pharmaceutical companies on behalf of health insurance beneficiaries. The FTC previously endorsed these ventures as a model for advancing consumer interests. But Ms. Khan revoked that endorsement and is now pursuing more invasive regulations against the industry.

Ms. Khan may say she’s reining in big business on behalf of the underdog, but it appears she’s actually colluding with powerful interests against the underdog: us.

Just last year, the FTC chair delivered the keynote address at the National Community Pharmacists Association’s annual convention. This shows Ms. Khan’s conflict of interest. Along with the major drugmakers, the association supports draconian regulations on PBMs and is aggressively lobbying in Washington to take its side on the matter.

That’s why Mr. Cruz has cautioned Congress against supporting Ms. Khan in this new drug industry power grab. Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform applauded him for doing so, stating that “lawmakers should certainly be wary of expanding the FTC’s power in any way, specifically when new regulation would seemingly not benefit consumers.”

The FTC is supposed to intervene only if bad actors are rigging the market to the detriment of consumers. It’s not supposed to force companies to adopt left-wing policies, impose European standards, or pick winners and losers. Lina Khan is betraying that mission in favor of her own “woke” agenda.

American consumers deserve better from those entrusted to keep an eye on business for us. The FTC should return to its stated purpose and only interfere with the economy when absolutely necessary.

Nobody elected Lina Khan to stifle American ingenuity. We need the people we elected to stand up to these changes and demand we return to the way things should be.

• Matt Mackowiak is president of Potomac Strategy Group and chairman of the Travis County, Texas, Republican Party. He is a Republican consultant, a former Bush administration official, a Bush-Cheney reelection campaign veteran and a former press secretary to two U.S. senators.