The Hill’s Changemakers: Lina Khan, FTC chair

If you’re not making someone angry, as the saying goes, you probably aren’t doing anything important.  

And Lina Khan, who chairs the country’s antitrust agency, has angered a lot of people.  

Since her confirmation as the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2021, Khan has gone head-to-head with some of America’s most powerful companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Kroger.  

A central piece in President Biden’s agenda to curb corporate power and greed, the FTC under Khan, along with the Justice Department’s antitrust division, has blocked dozens of deals in recent years, citing concerns that excessive consolidation undermines competition. 

Her aggressive antitrust actions have made her a political lightning rod and sparked backlash from Wall Street and its allies in Washington, with big names in business and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle lobbying for her prompt ouster in the next administration.  

“Look, we protect the public, and it’s inevitable that when you’re taking on powerful corporations that are breaking the law, there’s gonna be pushback. And we think it’s important to stay focused on who we represent and who we’re fighting for, and that’s the American people,” Khan told comedian Hasan Minhaj in a recent interview.   

Khan’s proconsumer crusade against corporate consolidation earned praise among Democrats and even some Republicans, including Vice President-elect JD Vance.   

“I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” then-Ohio Sen. Vance said earlier this year. In August, after President-elect Trump selected him as his running mate, he said that she has “been very smart about trying to go after some of these big tech companies that monopolize what we’re allowed to say in our own country.”  

Despite praise from the vice president, however, Trump is expected to replace her when he takes office in January. And realistically, the Trump administration is expected to walk back the ambitious antitrust enforcement agenda and be more merger-friendly than the Biden administration.   

But Khan’s fight against corporate consolidation has found a foothold among progressives and certain populist “Khanservative” Republicans who will remain active players in a GOP-controlled Washington.  

“[T]o the extent that some of the more populist elements of Trump’s coalition are reflected in the administration’s antitrust enforcement policies, we could see the new administration pursue a more active enforcement agenda than prior Republican administrations,” according to a recent analysis from the legal and lobbying firm Hogan Lovells.