Biden to nominate Lina Khan as FTC Commissioner

New York: US President Joe Biden is likely to nominate 32-year-old Lina Khan from Columbia Law as the commissioner of Federal Trade Commissioner (FTC). She is known as leading voice in the antitrust movement.

If nominated by Biden administration and confirmed by Senate, she will become the youngest ever FTC Commissioner. She will be overseeing privacy, data security and antitrust.

While still a law student at Yale, Khan cranked out a 96-page zinger titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”, published in the Yale Law Journal in January 2017.

Broadly, Khan’s argument is that the old antitrust framework needs an internet era fix. She makes the case that the consumer surplus argument alone isn’t enough or ever intelligent



anymore.

Khan frames the next era of competition policy for platform markets in the form of two questions: “First, does our legal framework capture the realities of how dominant firms acquire and exercise power in the internet economy? And second, what forms and degrees of power should the law identify as a threat to competition? Without considering these questions, we risk permitting the growth of powers that we oppose but fail to recognise.

Biden decided to nominate Khan as FTC Commissioner as the regulators, lawmakers and the courts are facing the pressure to take on Big Tech.

Earlier, Rebecca Slaughter, the present FTC acting chairperson said that the agency will adopt an aggressive approach towards tech.