FTC Chair Lina Khan Delivers a Sequel to a Brandeis Speech

28Jul23

On November 1, 1912, Brandeis delivered a speech to the Economic Club in New York City about the danger of trusts. An excerpt of the speech was later published in his book The Curse of Bigness under the title “The Regulation of Competition Against the Regulation of Monopoly.” (The entire speech was reprinted in the third volume of the Year Book of the Economic Club of New York, which can be found on Google Books.)

Ninety years later, on July 24, 2023, Federal Trade Commission Chair, and neo-Brandeisian, Lina Khan gave a speech of her own to the Economic Club that harkened back to Brandeis’ speech and looked forward to the future.

In his speech, Brandeis expounded on the ills inflicted upon society by trusts and monopolies, and claimed that the only way to remedy these abuses was to regulate competition in order to prevent trusts from forming in the first place — a philosophy that led to the formation of the Federal Trade Commission.

In her speech, Khan relates how the formation of the Commission led to unparalleled prosperity in America and how America’s abandonment of the policy of regulating competition and its embrace of free markets has erased all those gains. She gives example after example of how corporate concentration has negatively impacted modern life: from skyrocketing health care and pharmaceutical prices, to supply chain disruptions, to widespread economic disparity.

She then talks of how President Biden has signed an executive order to make the regulation of competition a cornerstone of American economic policy, and how the FTC, under her leadership, is working to enact that policy. She describes various of the FTC’s activities, including blocking dangerous mergers, advocating for the elimination of non-compete clauses in employment contracts, investigating outrageous drug prices, and other initiatives.

Overall, her speech is an excellent reminder on the continued relevance of Brandeis’ economic philosophy. You can read her speech on the FTC’s site.

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