Good day all. It’s no secret that the Biden Maladministration was basically run by Communists, Socialists and people who basically hate American business. The Federal Trade Commission under Biden’s FTC head, Lina Khan went after companies for daring to conduct business.
Then something happened that the Left tried desperately to prevent. President Trump was reelected in 2024. Since he was sworn in, he has been moving to reduce the regulatory overhead inflicted on American businesses. Additionally, the Trump FTC is going after actual monopolies that do harm American consumers. Here are the detail from Breitbart:
Over the last several weeks, the Trump administration has aggressively brought pro-consumer populism back to antitrust policy.
Trump’s antitrust efforts have operated on two tracks. On one of these tracks, regulators are pressing forward with long-awaited cases against the likes of Apple — efforts aimed at curbing platform dominance and restoring competition in digital markets.
I personally don’t use or like most Apple products. I do have a subscription to Apple TV, but I detest their computers and the Iphone. I think Apple is more interested in totalitarian levels of control then in actually just providing technology and services to people.
On the other, they’re putting an end to the antitrust legacy of Biden FTC chief Lina Khan, who was accused of weaponizing lawsuits against businesses the Biden administration didn’t like.
At the top of the list were gun manufacturers and gun dealers. They also went after anyone who didn’t bend the knee to the Green New Deal and government control of everything.
Cracking down on abusive tech companies and ending Biden and Khan’s lawfare are viewed inside the administration as pro-consumer. In the past, consumer welfare has been the heart of antitrust enforcement and the focus of agencies like the FTC.
I looked up Lina Kahn and surprise, surprise, she is not a native born American. She was born in London, England and came to the United States when she was 11 with her family. Looking at her educational background, it looks like she was thoroughly indoctrinated by the progressive “Educational” system in new York.
Reading through her bio on Wikipedia, (Yes, I know), it looks like she’s never actually done a days work in the “Dreaded Private Sector.” It looks like she either been in school, working for a think tank or in the Government. Once she was fired from the FTC, she went to work on Comrade New York Mayor Mamdani’s transition team.
On the first antitrust track, the Trump administration has been pursuing anticompetitive behavior by big tech companies. That includes through the Justice Department’s monopolization case against Apple.
I’ll flat out state that I don’t know anything about this case. I do know that Apple is notorious regarding it’s app store and what it charges developers. I’m sure there are other things that are being looked at as well.
According to recent filings, Apple is pushing back aggressively against the government’s requests, arguing that the DOJ is seeking sweeping internal documents and data that go far beyond what is necessary to litigate the case.
No surprise on that. Of course the DoJ won’t quit either.
The DOJ hasn’t backed down. In its response, the government notes that extensive discovery is necessary because otherwise Apple could hide the very evidence needed to determine if its actions are lawful.
I’m sure that Apple would never try to hide anything.
For now, the case is moving forward, and it’s not the only one. Last year, the DOJ won significant remedies against Google for anticompetitive actions in the search services and AI markets.
I recall that one. Google once had the motto “Don’t be evil.” People looked at Google and thought that they were the best thing since sliced bread. One person, Jeff Jarvis, wrote a book back in 2009 titled “What would google do?” Google has since ditched their original motto and while I never read the book, it too has aged like milk left in the sun in Death Valley in July. Google has been big on censoring the Internet of what it’s leadership considers “Wrongthink.”
The message is that if big tech uses its size and clout to strangle markets and bilk consumers, the government is going to come down on them.
Many of the Big Tech companies have acted in the same manner as the original monopolies or Trusts of the mid to lat 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the CEO’s of the original Trusts, many in Big Tech think that they are smarter than everyone else and should be allowed to do what they want. While I tend to be a bit of a Laissez-faire free marketer, Big Tech has shown that it is anything but.
Trump’s government has also made progress toward ending the Biden lawfare legacy. This is especially true at the FTC, where Khan has been replaced by Andrew Ferguson, who favors a more traditional antitrust approach.
I mentioned Khan earlier. She was not someone who should have been allowed anywhere near a position of authority regarding business. She put politics over the law and reality. The things she did, or tried to do, would have done a huge amount of damage to the economy. This isn’t surprising since she had no actual experience, only theory.
Ferguson, for example, quickly ended an FTC lawsuit against Pepsi because the company was offering consumers lower prices at big box stores like Walmart, which the Biden administration perceived as discriminatory and against antitrust law.
How could this be discriminatory? Bulk buyers are always looking to get a better deal from suppliers, and since they are making huge purchases, the economics of scale kick in. Since Khan never actually worked at anything where this would apply, all she had was the socialist theories she was taught in schools such as Yale.
Between November 2024 and January 2025, Biden’s FTC initiated or referred at least 10 enforcement actions, an unprecedented blizzard on the way out the door. Many of these have since been eliminated by Ferguson, though he is still working through some of them.
Since Dementia Joe Biden wasn’t actually running anything by the end, or middle, and probably the beginning of his maladministration, it isn’t surprising that they decided to get as much revenge as they could before President Trump was sworn in. Pity they didn’t understand that President Trump was ready to get to work on day one of his administration.
One holdout is the Biden administration’s case against Southern Glazer’s, a wine and liquor distributor, which has attracted significant legal attention over the last several weeks due to recent court actions. This lawsuit is similar to the Pepsi one, claiming that Southern Glazer’s violated antitrust law by offering discounts to bulk-purchase stores like Costco.
I don’t know anything about this company or deal they made with Costco. It looks like they sell wine. Since I don’t drink all that much adult beverages, I’ve never been interested in the Costco wine selection. I’ve heard that the person who actually makes the selections is actually a bit of a wine snob.
This attack on “price discrimination” was called out at the time by then-commissioner Andrew Ferguson, who warned that the lawsuit could end up doing exactly the opposite of what antitrust enforcement is supposed to achieve by raising prices “for millions of hardworking Americans.” Ferguson later leveraged the same logic to ax the Pepsi suit when he became FTC chair.
It wasn’t about helping out the consumers, it was all about punishing successful businesses.
The Southern Glazer’s suit in particular shows just how far the Biden administration sometimes went to advance its anti-business agenda. According to video excerpts from a deposition hearing, released publicly last month, the FTC’s lawyers confirmed they could not identify a single diverted consumer or suffering retailer as a result of Southern Glazer’s discounts. The agency also refused to answer whether Costco-style bulk pricing leads to cost-savings.
That should tell you all you need to know about how the FTC was run under Lina Kahn. It was always about forcing her ideology on American businesses, never about actually working to protect consumers. Now one thing that the FTC might want to look into is the Planet Fitness business model. While I’ve never been a member, apparently canceling a membership is next to impossible. The Fat Electrician stumbled into this issue and posted a video about it.
Now that is a company that needs a federally mandated enema. It’s good to see the FTC returning to what it was meant to be. I understand that employee morale, which I have read basically cratered under the tender ministrations of Lina Khan has actually improved significantly under it’s new head, Andrew Ferguson. Now they can look at ripping Apple a new one. They certainly deserve it.
Thatisall
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