US House panel drops bid to remove FTC’s antitrust authority

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By Jody Godoy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House Judiciary Committee reversed course on a proposal to remove the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust authority on Wednesday, days after its Republican leadership included the measure in a budget package.

The House panel led by U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican, had included the proposal in its budget package on Monday. During a hearing on the package, Jordan offered and the committee passed an amendment that would remove the measure.

The FTC is using its antitrust authority to pursue a Big Tech crackdown supported by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, including potential probes into whether online platforms have broken the law in limiting conservatives’ speech.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has said that if companies colluded to set content moderation policies, or if advertisers coordinated boycotts of platforms such as Musk’s X, such actions could violate antitrust law. The FTC is now in the middle of a high-stakes antitrust trial against Meta Platforms. The case brought during Trump’s first term accuses Meta of holding a social media monopoly, which the company denies.

The House Judiciary measure would have shifted the FTC’s antitrust staff and work to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The two agencies have shared federal antitrust jurisdiction, intended to guard against anticompetitive business behavior, for more than 100 years.

The proposal mirrored the One Agency Act, a Republican bill that has gotten support from Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO leading Trump’s bid to slash the federal workforce.

Critics have said the measure would effectively repeal the FTC’s broad authority to sue companies over unfair methods of competition, which the agency is using in cases against pharmacy benefit managers, Amazon and John Deere.

(Reporting by Jody Godoy in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul, Aurora Ellis and Cynthia Osterman)