Breaking up big business is hard to do

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Federal Trade Commission is the sheriff for big businesses. One of its main functions is to stop companies from buying up other companies in a way that hurts competition. Those investigations have been going way up under FTC Chair Lina Khan, and it's not gone unnoticed by critics in business and some Republican lawmakers. Today on the show, we look at the FTC's scorecard under Lina Khan.

Related Episodes:
Listen to Planet Money's three-part series on antitrust.
• Antitrust one
• Antitrust two
• Antitrust three

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Correction: A previous version of this story said the FTC had paused its action against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The FTC has paused one legal approach, but still has an appeal pending with a second legal approach.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:09.0	Gathered, I went to the economic club of New York for a lunch.
0:16.0	Good afternoon, everybody.
0:17.0	Thanks so much to Barbara and the whole economic team.
0:20.0	Lena Khan was speaking.
0:21.0	She's the chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
0:24.0	And Lena was speaking in this exclusive Manhattan building.
0:28.0	It had this opulent painting covering the ceiling.
0:31.0	It had a strict dress code, security even warned a guest for wearing the wrong shoes.
0:37.0	The FTC is firing on all cylinders using all of our tools to promote free and fair competition in the modern economy.
0:44.0	There was this palpable tension in the room because this is where the big deal makers and business executives socialize.
0:51.0	And many of them aren't happy with Lena's new tougher approach on corporate America.
0:56.0	I mean, just listen to the financial media.
0:59.0	Lena Khan, it's thrown away the core mission of the Federal Trade Commission.
1:02.0	She's against what's good for customers, what's good for the consumer.
1:06.0	This is the third time this week that we've talked about in this Khan.
1:09.0	Over a third of her staff surveyed last year did not have a high level of respect for senior leadership.
1:15.0	Critics argue the FTC is bringing cases to court that it can't win and that it's on this losing streak.
1:23.0	This is the indicator from Pat at Money, I'm Terren Woods.
1:26.0	As Lena Khan and her colleagues rewrite the rules for how business is done in America,
1:31.0	how is the FTC doing? Like what's at scoreboard?
1:35.0	We try to find out and along the way we learn just how messy leading this competition watchdog can get.
	...

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