Jessica Melugin of the Competitive Enterprise Institute writes about how the new Democratic majority on the Federal Trade Commission could rewrite antitrust rules:

FTC chair Lina Khan was hampered in her policy agenda by the equal party split of her commissioners, but Georgetown Law professor and privacy expert Alvaro M. Bedoya’s recent razor-thin confirmation by the Senate gives her the majority she needs to make big changes. But even before Bedoya’s arrival, Khan has made good use of her time. She has already paved the way for a policy lurch to the left at the nation’s most powerful consumer-protection agency.
She spearheaded the rescinding of the 2015 Policy Statement, a bipartisan Obama-era policy that confined the meaninglessly broad congressional directive of combating “unfair methods of competition” to the consumer-welfare standard widely recognized by the courts. Those guardrails are now off. Khan also put a gag order on staff speaking publicly, revised the FTC’s Mission Statement, and has begun the process of revamping merger guidelines.

Read the whole thing here.