administration. >> priority initiatives have included a proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses skraout advertising dominant middle men

protecting people's sensitive data from uncheck the surveillance and fighting for americans' rights to access affordable high quality healthcare. prior to joining the f.t.c. mrs. khan served as council to the judiciary committee somebody committee on antitrust commercial and administrative law. she was an associate proffer at columbia law school. she is a graduate of williams college and yale law school. join me it giving her a very warm welcome. [applause] comm'r khan: thank you so much for the kind introduction. thanks to brookings and government studies program for hosting us. thanks to you for being here. brookings is sharpening u.s. policy over a century and i

appreciate your inviting me for a conversation about the federal trade commission. i'm especially grateful to bill baer who is a pillar of antitrust and former director of the bureau of competition and former assistant attorney general for antius it at the justice department he is in a league of his own with depth of experience and institutional knowledge and it is a pleasure to get the benefit from his wise counsel. it is an extraordinary honor to serve as chair of f.t.c. an agency boss mission is tied to principles of fairness, opportunity and freedom. i'm grateful to fellow commissioners for the partnership and i know i speak for the well senior team when i say the f.t.c. is lucky to have a brilliant and hard working staff carrying utah our mission. i would like to begin by taking

a few minutes to reflect on the last four years both the values that guided our work, approach we took to carrying out our mandate and tangible results we have delivered for the american people. congress created the f.t.c. in 1914 with a mandate to present unfair methods of competition. it was given tools to halt illegal business practices and scrutinize how market functions. over the years lawmakers expanded the purview charging it with stopping unfair or deceptive practices and enforcing dozens of additional statutes from toes ensuring the accuracy of made in u.s.a. labels to protecting kids privacy online. the f.t.c. fits in a broader tradition of antimonopoly. the recognition that real liberty means freedom from economic coercion and arbitrary

exercise of unaccountable power. the f.t.c. has worked securing fair, honest and competitive markets means americans can enjoy basic protections. they can be assured fraud will be held to account. this work means that america's economy is the envy of the world where entrepreneurs can get ahead by delivering breakthrough ideas rather than be held back by giants and gate keepers. recent decades have shown there are serious costs to stream from this commitment to economic fairness, opportunity and freedom and to pursuing policies that favor consolidated and central iced markets. it can main people pay more for less and that people earn less while working more. it can moon a single disaster leads to a major shortage or a

single glitch trigger as major meltdown. local businesses can get muscled out and communities suffer or innovation stifles. attorney americans. more coerced and less free and people question what institutions that are supposed to protect them even work for them at all. we have seen how firms can be too big to care or rely on bait and switch tactics. this can create a better administrative sense of anxiety that you need to be on guard to make sure you are not about to be trick the when going about the most ordinary transaction. clear eyed by the challenges people face we set about to faithfully do the job congress set out. a few key principles governed our approach. first, we closely reviewed every statute that congress has entrusted us with an forcing. some of these authorities will

sat dormant for decades while some had never been used at all. in some cases it meant certain mandates from congress were not put into effect, other times businesses were not abiding by the law because enforcers had stopped enforcing it. the f.t.c. has focused on deploying the full set of tools congress has begin us from the military lending act to the robinson patton act it has activated or reinvigorated well over a dozen provisions making clear that the legal protection on the books are real not hypothetical. we have brought our enforcement of the laws more in line with the statutory text and depressants ensuring greater fidelity to what congress laid out. second, we focused on clear rules and remedies over complex burdensome ones.

experience has taught us rube goldberg remedies can be difficult to enforce and more likely to fail. complex regulations can favor big companies with expensive legal pls teams and clear rules can help create a level playing field. when faced with illegal mergers we close to block them rather than elaborate remedies and when issued clear bans and protections rather than extensive process requirements that created lots of paperwork but didn't fix the underlying problem. third we reduced regulatory burdens to promote efficiency. we streamlined internal processes to allow our teams to move more quickly and arrived at a -- revised the process for issuing consumer protection rules eliminating self-imposed red tape. we completed eight new rules from start to finish in the fraction. time skeptics predicted.

these rules are already now allowing us to issue lefty fines and get money back to defrauded consumers. fourth, we crafted an enforcement strategy to address major harms in major sectors of the economy. because law breaking by the biggest companies can lead to the biggest harm we didn't shy from taking on those major players or from holding individual executives accountable. we looked upstream it identify root culprits and by taking action against dominant middle men our lawsuits could fix major market distortions that have ripple effects. fifth, we focused on market reality revisiting old assumptions that no longer reflect how the economy works. we broaded expert it's with a

technology staff with data engineers, design experts and other specialists that let us analyze digital markets. we opened our doors to the public regularly engaging with and learn interesting people across our economy from farmers in aisles, iowa and technique to people in kansas city and new york. we regularly solicited public input through open commission meetings an frequent dockets. public engagement with the f.t.c. has reached record highs. comments to the f.t.c. have soared increasing from 13,000 five years ago it over 100,000 this past year alone. people who shared their expertise and experience have informed or priorities, sharpened our thinking and deepened our sunsing of how today's economy works. in antitrust and economic policy there can be a resistance to

this type of engagement a belief that only certain times of experts really understand how markets work. but throughout my conversations with members of the public across the country it is clear that people are keenly aware of how issues of corporate power facebook their day to day lives. they may not all say this market could use a homerun,being a lawsuit but they are saying there is screwing me over and i wish somebody would do something about it. we did do something about it. there are different ways to measure the success of a government agency. you can count the number of shots it has taken or how high it aimed. being look at the record in court and material impact the agency has had, the tangible benefits that people have seen and concrete ways life is better. what is truly humbling and astonishing by the work by all

of these standards is off the charts. by sheer volume of output the f.t.c. has issued a record number of rules and litigated a record number of cases, looked atten fanatic form will shortages to practices of pharmacy managers to invest manys in partnerships in ai and you've all of our advocacy tools with amicus pleas and comment letters and offering expertise it state ledge later. we have seen 43 mergers abandoned in light of our work with eight blocked after the filing of a complaint and five blocked after hard fought litigation. in major lawsuits targeting mapization by facebook and amazon we defeated key motions. our lawsuits have blocked illegal deals from across markets from mergers between

pharpl suit calendar companies to mergers between technology conditions that would have undermined innovation. courts have ruled in the f.t.c. favor helping protect communities across the country from unlawful consolidation. not only have we won our cases but advanced the law and set new precedents. courts have affirmed mergers getting a market share greater 30% are presumed unlawful. the sixth circuit affirmed the f.t.c. block of a vertical merger making clear they are not presumed to be benign and a texas court agreed that the f.t.c. was right to assess the cumulative impact of private equity roll-up. most recently the court affirmed the deals can be illegal if they undermine competition in liberal markets not just if they are bad for consumers.

remarkably our 2023 merger guidelines have been cited favorably by over a dozen courts in a year. nor have these wins limited to merger law. against big pesticide firms we used our authority prohibiting unfair methods of competition and court vindicated this approach. a court similarly upheld the section five claim rejecting amazon's motion to dismiss firming that the authority can reach a broader range of conduct. we have gotten key wins in how we use the unfairness authority with a court recognizing for the first time effort even a privacy -- the privacy violations can injure americans even without having to show further harm. a court recently vindicated the approach it taking on dark patterns agreeing manipulative design partners can violate the law. these have made life better for

americans. they are more affordable after the f.t.c. challengedle legal patents by pharmaceutical slashing the out of pocket price to $35. thousands of tenants were compensated after the biggest landlord was sued. those hidden fees that pile up when you are trying to buy concert tickets or rent a hotel room we banned. soon our rule will go into effect making it just as easy to cancel a subscription as to soon up for one. last month we sent millions of dollars back to fortnight players who were tricked into making an unkplted purchase with the average refund of $114 and this is a small fraction of the hundreds of hrlgs of dollars we've turned to people. people have told us the f.t.c. work makes them feel like the government is finally fighting for them. as one sever free throwsed

lifelong republican said our unanimous compete was the best thing the government has done. it is humbling to realize what we have asaoefrtd and this extraordinary level of impact from this small a team is virtually unheard of in government. this work though is far from over and the f.t.c. must remain visibility agele and committed to enforcing the will you without fear or favor. i hope that whoever takes the home of the f.t.c. in the coming years will keep the doors open and continue to engage from people from all parts of the country. after all congress created the f.t.c. to protect them and create a fair and more prosperous economy. for four years that is what we have done and it has been an extraordinary honor to have the opportunity to serve as chair with the civil servants.

now i look forward to continuing the conversation with bill and all of you. thanks so much. [applause] mr. baer: that was the easy part. now the tough questions. thank you for those thoughtful remarks and emphasis on economic liberty, which is really bottom line what the f.t.c. is and should be all about. i want to make sure i welcome you back to brookings and join in camille's graduate.

did you a wonderful overview of what you have accomplished and in a little less than four years. but why don't we start at the beginning, a very good place to start. in early 2021 president biden nominated you to the commission, you were confirmed in june, a few months later. by comparison it took me 13 months to get confirmed. in june on the day you were confirmed by the senate, the press designate -- the president designated you as chair. surprised by some. applauded by many and seismic shock to the business community and chamber of commerce. what i would like to do is take you back to those, that first year. you obviously have thought about what you would do.

you had come to the office, you enter the chair's wonderful office, and what did -- how did your advance thinking of what you were going to do and how change as you confronted the reality of being the f.t.c. chair? what challenges did you confront internally and externally, how did you address them and in looking back as you're winding down the things that you would have done differently. that in a court of law would be a compound objectionable question but we are not in a court of law. comm'r khan: it was like a long time ago but just under four but my process might have switched. i was nominated in march had the confirmation hearing in april and confirmed in june. to a lot of people's surprise i

took the helm as the chair. and it was no secret my antitrust writing and research was skeptical of the approach that antitrust agencies had taken in recent years, pointedly critical of certain decisions so to come in having functioned more as critic in identifying things that should be done differently to suddenly be in the driver's seat two help do that is a big change. this is in the middle of the pandemic, 2021 as was true for a lot of people coming into these positions there was still maximum telework, you cannery meetings were on zoom and you were looking at little boxing as you tried to meet teams and contributed as somebody unlike many other chairs who had not spent sentence active time

getting to know people and explain the priorities and how i wanted to go about doing them. the other thing is with agencies like the f.t.c. you come in and it is not like there's a blank canvas. you inherit a lot of active litigation and investigations, market studies so coming in midstream with a whole bunch of matters and figuring out what are we going to do with these? i was not sure when we started them. how do we start creating capacities for the agenda items we want to prioritize. all of that just takes time so it was at least 12 months in that some of the core general items that i wanted to advance really got to even seeing the light of day. the other important task was building the right team and who was the right fit for what type of role and i was so grateful to

have warm colleagues at the f.t.c. and my colleague, commissioners, had been there were longer and i had to figure out how did this execution work. the f.t.c. is a unique institution in a full set of ways and it has been interesting as i engage with enforcers around the world to realize a lot of agencies across the world are thinking through now how do we create a agency combining competition, consumer protection and privacy appear those three are deeply integrated in one building and something that is important to me as well as some of my co-commissioners is figuring out how you make sure the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. what does it look like it make sure we are not just firing on all cylinders but fully using the integrated expertise across

these places. the other big shock when you sit down and start to figure out how you allocate resources is how small the agency is relative to the jog that congress has given us. we enforce the f.t.c. act covers swaths of conduct and then something to the order of 80-something additional statutes. so making decisions about reseniors allocation, propertization and what is the best way to start getting the matters you most care about up and running were all key decisions that i had to make early. mr. baer: thank you for that. the size of the agency when you first started was probably just a little more than half of what it was as you unkindly reminded the audience when i started there 50 years ago.

let me turn to your discussion about mergers. you came in based on some of your writings and a real commitment to reinvigorating merger enforcement addressing labor market issues something largely addressed in prior administrations. you mentioned administrations of competitors, roll up by private equity and ears. you promised to pay as you said were closer attention to remedies and what works and what doesn't and to avoid having the agency be the regulator after a merger is consummated. i think you delivered on that. you also said you were going to work hard to update the merger guidelines and hart scott rodino which is the merger reporting requirements a form that had not been updated since about 1979.

early on you had a couple of losses in merger challenges, but -- and the critics pounced on that. but lately the story line seems were more favorable. with respect to merger enforcement, what has the f.t.c. accomplished and what have you done jointly with jonathan cantor at the justice department in terms of advancing antitrust merger enforcement? comm'r khan: i was very fortunate to get to serve in this whole r role while jonathan was heads of the antitrust digs. tkwaoeply shared values and commitments that resulted in as strong a relationship between our two agencies as we have had in decades. we won a few months of joining sat down and had a discussion what are the areas of the law

that we think are ripe for making sure we are having the courts engage with new facts and ensuring the law is keeping face with those market ralgts. let's collectively figure this beauties especially with mergers we are in a reactive posture. there's a limited degree we can go fine the perfect test candidate created in a lab. we are looking at what is coming in the door and having to make prospective risk assessments. you are dealing with a situation where there are an endless number offen knowns appear extremely short time relatively speaking to decide do i do an in-depth investigation. we were particularly aware of a lot of learning over the last few decades relating to the general markets under my spresd sore the f.t.c. will condition a report looking at 800 and

something acquisitions by the big five technology companies that had gone under the radar. there were a lot of lessons being learned five or six years ago about the realities of digital markets, feedback loops, network externalities, data. what does that mean for the importance of actually intervening early rather than were later when it can be were more difficult to rectify. there had been a robust conversation about farm suital mergers before i joined and does it make sense to look at what is the overlap in the pipeline or should we try to figure out how are the pharma companies thinking of their portfolio. it was really gratifying we had opportunity to actually bring merger challenges to pharma deals including the challenge where we it would deprecise

patients of this alternative drug even though it was not on the market today so we were having to look into the future. the companies ended up abandoning and mays partnered with a different company which was a important development. that was as equally good terms and would bring the drug to market more quickly which goes to show the f. it. c. approach is as the statute says presenting mergers or acquisitions that may lessen competition or 10 to create a monopoly. that doesn't mean the partnerships are going to be impermissible. so i think sometimes it is interesting what companies tell us this is the best deal we could get and you end up blocking it and actually they got something better. those are some things top of mind, potential competitors, vertical mergers. i remember in 2017 when the

justice filed the charge to at&t time warner that was seismic on a -- that was one of the first vertical merger challenges from justice department department in a long time. they ended up not winning that one but after i joined we had a steady drum beat of vertical from lockheed arrow jets to where we ultimately prevailed. mr. baer: prevailed in district court and ninth circuit. comm'r khan: microsoft is still before the ninth circuit mr. baer: merger guidelines. 2010 guidelines had been around but you and jonathan decided to take a fresh look. tell us what evolved from that process and to what degree there's been court acceptance and embracement of the merger

guidelines. comm'r khan: this is a process we started quite early. i think we sent out the first request for information december of 2021 posing a list of owneded questions to the public. that tphfrtd our drafting around what should this next version look like. i think one of the most significant steps was even figuring out conceptually what should the scaffolding of the document look like. when you open the 2022 merger guidelines they look different than the 2010 guidelines and figuring out what is the right way to put out what are ultimately analytical tools to aiden forcers during their investigation. so it took a bit to get that initial framing right. what we landed on and jonathan was a fantastic thought partner in this was how competition manifests the dimensions on

which firms are competing vary depending on the market and the tools and evidence that will give you insight into what competition looks like will vary. so figuring out what the concentration is in a market could be probative but it might not be. so, making sure we are giving enforcers the flexibility based on the market to figure out is there a problem here was one of the animating goals. we wanted to make sure we were updating for what seems to be gaps we needed to address including labor markets and acquisitions and we have a guideline that tax about platforms as a whole because there is the kind of platform playbook for how acquisitions can undermine competition in terms of impeding interoperability or data.

so we included that in a draft. we published the draft the summer of 2023. so it took close to 18 months from that initial request for information to put together that draft. our team has worked extraordinarily hard. it has read through every litigated decision on merger law trying figure out what does the precedent say and there would be team meetings that would last three hours to talk about a single clause and what is the exact result so it was a tremendous team effort. mr. baer: and you had more than a little public feedback to digest. comm'r khan: yes, active listening sessions with different market participantsment farmers, healthcare workers, those in creative professions. and we got i want to say between three and six thousand comments on the initial draft. our team read and cataloged them

and made some unanimous strive ideal adjustments before finalizing last december. it happened to be that we had a very active set of merger enforcements ready to go is we were citing the guidelines, drawing on them and it has been thrilling to see courts engage with guidelines, cite them with pervasive authority and in some say the guidelines tell me this and not this and that would be helpful so that institutional dialogue is happening. it has been enormously tkpwrt phiing to see courts accept for example a showing of the elimination of head to head competition between rivals can be an independent basis for showing liability or not necessarily also have to show what the four corners of the market are that it is presumptively unlawful. in the albert son case we had

judge agree a merger may lessen competition could be illegal and she did lay out areas where she taught additional guidance from economic experts could be helpful. the structural presumption is still in fact serial acquisition we have gotten useful rulings and even nonmerger cases they are citing tkpwhraoeupbls for principles of how you do competition analysis that. has all been tremendous gratifying. mr. baer: i think i saw a footnote in a speech at least eight or nine courts have already cited the guidelines as the revised 2023 final version asper did as persuasive authority. comm'r khan: we are monitoring and we are up to 12. mr. baer: one thing that the biden administration did that

was designed to have an executive branch, be a independent agency wide impact is his july 2021 executive order on competition establishing a competition council. as you look back in terms of that order, what impact did it have? it seemed to me from afar that it was empowering the f.t.c. and antitrust division to work more closely direct it them to be involved in decision as it could impact competition, consumers. what is your overall assessment of that executive order? comm'r khan: it was an emmen's ly significant executive order and credit to them for prioritizing. there is so much going on the first six months of an

administration and to say i will prioritize an order on competition takes people recognizing the importance of it. i think it did a few things. first it told a story why competition matters and what happens when competition declines and the e.o. notes that it can mean higher prices and lower wages but also affects business dine missile and if people feel real opportunity in their day to day lives and it put the spotlight on agencies other than the f.t.c. and d.o.j. and said we have these enforcers of the antitrust laws but that's not the beginning and ends of competition policy. it covers all of these additional tools and authorities spanning all of these federal regulators and agencies that are in the business of shaping markets in one way or another. and the decision these agencies make be the agriculture

department. transportation, are impacting whether markets are more consolidated or competitive. so we want to headache sure they are conscious of that and recognizing that we want everybody to be rowing in the same direction. that was incredibly important. this was not an e.o. that went out there was a week of discussion and that was the end of it. the president and his team prioritized bringing together the cabinet and heads of federal agencies at least twice a year to sit down with the president and tell him what we had done. i think that was incredibly important and helped further focus agencies on the fact that this was a priority. and toes gatherings there would be a formal pwoeuplt it forced all of us in the same room in a way that helped or organically create relationships in ways that made it easier to pick up a phone say i know you are looking at this, have you thought about this. one area where it really benefitted us was in our

investigation and ultimate challenge of the lockheed arrow jet merger. as you know, how the defense department comes out on a major merger in the defense industrial space really matters. it could be very difficult for an antitrust agency to say this is harmful to competition an d.o.d. says no, it is great so making sure we had that relationship to have that analysis and benefit from that was one of the many ways that the e.o. was constructed. we also filed comments in various regulatory dockets during the f.t.c. experience when usda was thinking about their rules addressing fairness or d. o.t. was thinking of their efforts. so all of that i see as having been quite successful. mr. baer: i have heard over the years from agency and cabinet secretaries and deputies counsel

there's nothing like being responded to the white house two or three times a year to report what you have done it achieve the executives staff executive order and that accountability really made it easier for your views to be heard and be invited into the process. sticking with issues outside of your agency, one noteworthy accomplishment i think in the last four years has been the degree to which state attorneys general have upped their game in terms of working with or side by side with the f.t.c. and the antitrust division. what do you think about what and how that happened? comm'r khan: to my mind state attorneys general have a paramount role to play in antitrust and for the f.t.c. they are close importance on the

consumer protection side. they can enforce the sherman act and clayton act and most have state antitrust laws. some of those laws are parallel to the f.f.c.en fair methods of competition authority with juris praoups saying the f.t.c. interpretation can influence how courts look so we have a productive relationship. we had state a.g.'s join our lawsuit taking on illegal schemes by the pesticide manufacturers and buy partisan coalition investigating amazon monopolization. and even as we go about our investigations we make sure we engage to say this is happening very locally for you should we have some type of information sharing agreement. yesterday we announced an enforcement action against handy in partnership with a new york a.g. and you are right,

especially the last few years we have seen a lot of bipartisan focus, imagine lawsuits, bipartisan lawsuits taking on practices by google and ears. so i think it has been reproductive as we get more court rulings explaining there are these -- how are these century statutes apply. mr. baer: this was not just a blue state cooperation process a lot of red state attorneys general were involved. how do you account for that? comm'r khan: it is a striking moment where there's been this bipartisan concern about what happens when we allow markets to being dominated by fewer companies. i think there's a very vibrant conversation happening among republicans and conservatives about yes we recognize unchecked

state power can undermy opinion liberties but unchecked private power can undermine liberties and there is a deeper recognition of that and greater appreciation for how antitrust enforcement in technique can make sure people are not being subjected to unchecked coercion. so it is great to get the partnerships with states on both sides much the aisle. mr. baer: i assume there is potential to that to endure going forward with the states will remain actively involved in antitrust. comm'r khan: they were joining cases before i arrived and hope they will keep doing it especially on the consumer protection front we had close relationships. mr. baer: i want to talk about antitrust rulemaking. there's a big rule out there that was adopted in your recent tenure banning noncompete

agreements that restrict the abilities of workers to leave an employer and go somewhere else in their field. maybe with a geographic limitation. the rule adopted by a 3-2 vote, i think, is being challenged in the courts with a preliminary injunction in texas. the opposition has argued that congress did not explicitly intend for the federal trade collision to have the authority to issue substantive antitrust rules. a week ago you wrote a strong defense of why congress actually did explicitly anticipate there would be substantive rules and cited considerate authority embracing that view. at the same time, critics are saying things have einvolved,

the supreme court is more leery of granting deference it agencies in deciding what their authorities are and are not. challenging whether major questions can be broadly delegated to an agency to implement. so, what is your response to those criticisms? and i would also like you to talk about the issue to take on this important issue as a rulemaking as opposed to simply pursuing case by case challenges to noncompete agreements. comm'r khan: a big focus has been harm to workers frommen fair methods of competition an deceptive practices.

we got over 25,000 comments from people across the country and i had known that noncompetes privilege hated outside the boardroom but i was struck by the volume of engagement. people live busy lives and sit down and submit a comment you have to feel that there's some purpose there. tfrpbs devastating it read some of the ways that unanimous competes have affect people's limbs. we are talking about security guards, janitors, hair dress he is, healthcare workers, people that had to commute many more hours in a day and miss spending time with their families. people who were stuck in jobs isn'ted to harassment facing financial ruin if they left and were hit with a multi-thousand dollar lawsuit. so this is real harm to real people happening on a big scale. we did bring some enforcement actions against against a

security guard company where there were making close to minimum wage extraordinary onerous fan competes and a set of glass manufacture companies who where the theory is less unlike the security guard case it was coercive and directly undermining the workers. but this was more about the harm in competition in the product and service market because we heard from entities that wanted to enter the market but realized the relevant talent pool was locked up through noncompetes so there were harms of labor market competition but harm to product and service market competition that directly affect us as consumers. we brought those lawsuits, thousands of unanimous competes were dropped and promulgated this rule. this is not the first time the f.t.c. promulgated a competition rule specially in the 1960's and 1970's there were a lot of joint

competition and consumer protection rules. at least one was challenged ultimately reached the d.c. circuit. the same question was posed to them does section 6 of the f.t.c. act grant rulemaking authority and the d.c. state unambiguously yes. there was a seventh circuit case that confirmed that and that was the leland scape we were operating against. you are right, there were some pretty significant rulings from the supreme court rethinking how much deference should agencies get, rethinking in some instances refining doctrines like the major question doctrine and we had a team closely look at that and figure houfrpt of that was impacting the f.t.c. after we have finalized the rule we got challenged in three different courts the eastern district of pennsylvania. middle district of florida and

district court in texas. what has been interesting, each of those preliminary injunction rulings has been different. different on the analysis. the eastern district of pennsylvania said across the board the f.t.c. has this authority reskwrepblgted the arbitrary and can't precision and rejected major questions. the middle district of florida interestingly did find for us on the substantive rule making i do think that it gives you this authority but there's this major question in the background and this does seem major. texas found against us on the statutory rulemaking question. so, two of the three courts just purely on the question of does the statute allow us to promulgate competition rules said yes. they are now two appeals one the 1eud circuit, one in the fifth

circuit. we will ultimately see what happens there. but i think especially after we saw the magnitude of harm thinking through what would it look like for us tackle this purely through adjudication it seems if we have precedent on our side and authority we have an obligation to see if we can get this done. mr. baer: thank you. one thing i have noticed that seems to have changed evolving change as you perhaps accelerate it is what the talent pool is that you recruited into the agency. in my day it was talented lawyers, economists, paralegals out of college but the team looks different now. can you talk about that? comm'r khan: we still have a lot of lawyers, economists and very lucky to have a very talented pool of people especially given that these are career civil

servants who could be making multiples of their salary in the private sector. you are right we have expanded teams, brought in different types of specialties within the economics bureau including thinking more about labor economists, accountants, financial specialists. we also created this new office of technology bringing on data engineers, interface experts, a.i. experts. and it has been thrilling to see this office take fruit and have these technologyists in with the teams with lawyers and economists and we have had numerous cases are the count and violations looked different because we had a technologist on the team that was part of the investigation and helped us understand what was happening. so it is already making a material difference. we will have things like see

certain representations made by i understand this looks anticompetitive but it is for security reasons. now within a day book call tell in have our top security person sit down and grill them and tell us this is the part of the argument that makes sense and this is pretext so it is an expansion of expertise and with any agency can take some growing pains it figure out how the teams fully integrate and how does this new group fit. but it has been exciting to see that work. mr. baer: thank you. let me turn to ai, generative a.i. where is it to consider the good from the bad.

comm'r khan: the understanding is the most important part to understand how are these markets working. our teams have been going layer by layer across the ai stack so looking at the chip player, cloud compute, models and applications to figure out what are the core economic markets, what does the market like to the extent it seems dominated by a few players to what extent is that being driven by extremely high fixed costs, network effects versus do we think there might be some intype of leveraging. we have already brought a set of enforcement actions taking on some of the baseless claims about what ai can do. there's been a tremendous amount of ai hype or exaggerating what some of the tools can offer and harming people saying there are these business opportunities this tool could do so when

brought consumer protection kisses. we launched around a year ago a market study trying to understand what is happening with these partnerships and invest many, with some of the large cloud compute providers and newer model companies so that has been and i will eliminating exercise to see what extent is this pure arm's lent investment versus to what extent is the investor informing or influencing some of the competitive decision making here and what does that mean preliminarily for competition. it is a fast moving space. we are always eager to hear from market participants and engage with them. been to silicon valley twice in the last year appear sat down with founders and investors and tried to understand what they see as some of challenges or market opportunities and how do

we make sure we are incorporating that in our analysis. mr. baer: great. from the "washington post" an opinion piece was written that talked generally about how little of what biden has done is going to survive. she took on antitrust. i will read you a short summary but she said and of the courts largely forwarded the battles against big tech and its commendable band on worker unanimous compete. as for the broader agenda of making antitrust enforcement less focused on low consumer prices and more on goals and administration officials have little to show to-wit the fate of any ongoing tech cases will soon be in the hands of the trump administration boss top advisors include technique billionaires. i believe you addressed some of

there yesterday on cnbc. but give us your reaction. comm'r khan: look, it is important to have your analysis correspond to the facts and what has happened in the courts and i rattled off dozens of instances where the courts full my vindicated what the agencies have been doing. the d.o.j. won a major monopolization case against google that has proceeded to the remedy stage so i think we have racked up pretty significant wins with the courts embracing a lot of what we have put forward. i think the facts contradict that entirely. i do think that there will be an open question what do the next few years look like. i think it has been striking that probably in antitrust more than many other areas we do see some bipartisan agreements about the importance of strong antimonopoly enforcement making

sure we have checks on monopolization and corporate power, what that commitment like as translated into enforcement choices and policy decisions will have it wait and see. mr. baer: fair enough. the -- since about general you had two republican colleagues join you and based on listening it them and reading they are smart, opinionated. they eastern disagree with the majority of the commission. but it also struck me as noteworthy that on a number of things it has been a 5-0 vote, on a lot of others 4-1. what do you take away from that? where are areas where you think there's been agreement, which might carry over into a trump

f.t.c.? comm'r khan: i really enjoyed getting to engage with all my colleagues including the two most recent arrivals and you are right there are areas strong agreement, some areas of differences of opinion. all of the merger lawsuits we voted out since they joined were unanimous including the tapestry capri. we have a vertical challenge involving mattress companies. there we have seen unanimous agreement. there have been i think the dissent have mostly come with respect it the rulemaking, unanimous compete rule you mentioned, click to cancel was a 3-2. junk fees rule we had a 4-1 vote on that one. so i think it varies matter by matter. it has been interesting to see particular concerns around large

technology platforms and how they may be using their power. we have seen more recently a recognition that antitrust should be protecting workers from illegal conduct, not just consumers and we have seen a whole set of cases involving companies voted out that got some bipartisan agreement. so i think there's plenty of opportunity for areas of the work we have built out for continuation. mr. baer: great. are we about ready to go it questions? two minutes or so? so, we have some questions in writing. a lot of them were asking what is going to happen next and with that i adhere to yogi berra's view it is tough to make predictions particularly about the future. so i'm not going to get to those. here is one that was submitted online in advance. somebody said it is

disheartening to see the lack of public an political support for the work of the f.t.c. to avowed monopolies. has the f.t.c. this person asked done enough to educate the public and politicians why such an effort is necessary for the ever system. i expect you don't agree with comm'r khan: i appreciate the observation. it's an important component of what they do. it's important to have to continue to explain what an agency is doing, why it's doing it, and not just in d.c. but with people across the country. i have tried to prioritize that. i'm sure there are additional ways we could be doing it. but we made an effort to not just explain to people but also to listen from people. and you know, welcome suggestions for additional ways the commission should be doing that in coming years.

mr. baer: one of the things that was obvious to me is, the way you framed up your opening marks is, you speak plain english yowch don't do any consumer protection jargon. that make what is the agency does and how you talk about it much more accessible to the average american consumer. you should be commended for that. we've got time for a few questions. and why don't we start, the guy in the middle. please identify yourself. questioner: hello, in the banking space a lot of observers are speculating there'll be a wave of consolidation in the industry under the next administration. so assuming that plays out over the next four year, how do you think -- what are some things

you think the f.t.c. should be looking at or thinking about in terms of banking other the next administration? comm'r khan: the f.t.c. statute does not give us jurisdiction over banks. so it's the justice department along with other banking regulators that will have to be the key decisionmakers on that. there has been, you know, renewed, revised guidance on how to be thinking about banking mergers and analysis of mergers from the d.o.j., others have put outage sis on this. i would defer to those agencies. mr. baer: over here. questioner: michael nelson, carnegie endowment for international peace just next door. i focus a lot on international digital policies. some of the the biggest channels in dijal policy involve coordinating with other country,

particularly brussels. do you have any lessons you have learned about how to deal with a place like the european commission where you have so many different agendas and so many different languages, so that often they think they have a consensus that you can challenge and negotiate with about but they don't. we've seen over and over where they require companies to do three different things which are mutually incompatible. for instance, protect personal privacy but make sure our police have all the data they need if something happens. so any wisdom on dealing with the european union? comm'r khan: i've really enjoyed getting to engage with international counterparts across the world. i think especially when it comes to digital markets this is an opportunity -- this has been a moment of kind of shared learning. different jurisdictions are all grappling with some analogous channels. some are further along in thinking about privacy, be it

national or continent-wide policy regulations. some don't have those. especially as we've thought about mernlers and acquisitions there's been shared learning. i've really gotten to enjoy my engagement with count parts across the board. it's been interesting, especially on the consumer protection side, to see that some of the initiatives that the f.t.c. has been focused on like subscription traps have actually inspired interest and activity elsewhere. so we've been happy to share our expertise in that direction too. mr. baer: we're going to need to wrap this up, i think. we're going to have a little reception, stage left, you're welcome to come in and enjoy a little bit of refreshments. a couple of closing notes. first i want to thank the events and securities staff here at bookings. they make these events friendly.

catalina has been a wonderful event coordinator here at brookings. we thank you, as we said at the outset, all of you coming here today. those online, those on c-span. but important point is not just to thank you for being here, but to express our appreciation for 3 1/2, almost four years of dedicated public service and the significant personal sacrifices you made to be down here on the job pretty much 24/7. you framed this up at the beginning in terms of talking about economic liberty. i think regardless of political persuasion there's no doubt that your focus was ensuring that the american public benefited from competitive markets, free from unfair and deceptive practices, and for that, we're in your debt. thank you. comm'r khan: thank you so much.

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