For the last few years, a younger generation of Republicans — including Vice President-elect J.D. Vance — has tried to convince their party to (partially) rethink its traditional kowtowing to corporate interests. If they really want to be the party of the working class, it might not be enough to pour contempt on college professors and government employees. What if they combined that with a genuine skepticism of corporate power, and a willingness to use government to police monopolies and make sure markets work for everyone?
It was an interesting idea. But even if Vance and his allies were sincere — and there are plenty of reasons to doubt that — the incoming Trump White House is going in another direction. Big business will have even more influence in Donald Trump’s second administration than in his first, and the dream of a Republican Party that cares about voters’ pocketbooks, not just CEOs’ salaries, will be deferred yet again. The idea that this administration will be “populist” in any meaningful sense looks more like a joke every single day.
While not all of Khan’s antitrust actions have been successful, she has notched some notable victories.
Already, Trump has tapped more than a dozen billionaires and Wall Street tycoons to fill out Cabinet posts and advisory positions. He is dining with industry lobbyists and promising regulatory exemptions to big companies. And on Tuesday, he confirmed that he would replace Lina Khan, the government’s most prominent fighter against corporate power, as chair of the Federal Trade Commission.Under Khan, the FTC has been at the center of some of the most important action on markets and monopolies over the last four years. Along with Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Khan has reinvigorated antitrust enforcement, challenging giant mergers and bringing lawsuits against tech companies for their exploitative practices.
While not all of Khan’s antitrust actions have been successful, she has notched some notable victories. Earlier this year, the FTC sued to block a proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, arguing the merger would raise prices and hurt workers. After a judge sided with the FTC and state regulators, Albertsons backed out of the deal.
Though wealthy donors in both parties despise Khan, her adversarial relationship with large corporations, and particularly with the tech industry, won her some fans on the right. “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” said Vance earlier this year. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said that her past criticism of Amazon was “precisely why she was a good choice for the FTC.”
Hawley is just one Republican who has styled himself an anti-corporate crusader; he has introduced a bill to outlaw corporate political contributions, which he says would “hold Corporate America accountable for drowning out the voices of the American people.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Trump’s pick for secretary of state, once endorsed a union organizing drive at an Amazon facility, though only because he thought the company was too “woke” and should be punished.
The support for Khan from these “Khanservatives,” and the forlorn hope that Trump’s “populism” has anything to do with economics, led some to wonder if Trump might actually let Khan stay on. The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board warned In July that “Mr. Vance may lobby Mr. Trump to reappoint her in a second term.” Instead, Trump has picked FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as her replacement. In announcing Ferguson on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that “Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship.” But this hostility emerges only when Ferguson believes tech companies are censoring conservatives. He recently praised X owner Elon Musk, saying that the platform’s “current turn toward free expression is due only to its new owner’s unusually firm commitment to free and open debate.” In fact, Musk regularly silences his own critics on X and files lawsuits trying to quash speech he doesn’t like.
Ferguson’s pitch to run the agency, first reported by Punchbowl News, demonstrates that he will broadly reverse Khan’s robust antitrust enforcement. In the one-page document, he promises to “reverse Lina Khan’s anti-business agenda” by repealing “burdensome” regulations (i.e. regulations that businesses don’t like) and stopping “Lina Khan’s war on mergers.” And lest Big Tech gets too worried, he pledges to “end the FTC’s attempt to become an AI regulator.”
Now Vance and his allies’ claims to populism will be truly tested.
No one should be surprised that conservative support for Khan and opposition to Big Tech was never about the dangers of monopoly power or the well being of consumers. Republicans only get mad at companies when they perceive a threat to their partisan interests. Likewise, they’ll condemn corporate “wokeness” when companies celebrate Pride Month, but they don’t care if those same companies jack up prices, mistreat workers or pollute communities. For all the Khanservatives’ claim to be reimagining their party’s stance toward corporations, they lack any broader conception of how much power corporations should have, how government should ensure the proper functioning of markets, or what constitutes genuine competition in the public interest. They’re happy to have the FTC, and the government in general, revert to a reflexive view that corporations should be able to do pretty much whatever they want — so long as it’s conservative officials who are determining where the lines are.
Now Vance and his allies’ claims to populism will be truly tested. Are the corporate-oriented officials running key agencies in the new Trump administration going to reverse the Biden administration’s efforts in taking on corporate power? What about the FTC’s recently finalized “click to cancel” rule, which will require that canceling a subscription or gym membership is as easy as signing up in the first place? What about its crackdown on “junk fees,” or its ban on onerous noncompete agreements? Based on Trump’s actions since the election, all these moves could be at risk.
It’s not just the FTC — we could see the Trump administration end the efforts to get better treatment for airline passengers that Biden started, or follow up on threats to neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from financial industry scams and mistreatment (Elon Musk has said he wants to “delete” the CFPB). Here’s the real measure of the phoniness of the Republican claim to populism: As the next four years progress, watch how often the administration takes the side of consumers when they come in conflict with corporate interests. My bet is on “almost never.”
Perhaps Vance was sincere all the times he said he wanted a genuinely populist Republican Party that is skeptical of corporate power. But that’s almost certainly not what we’re going to get. Conservative ideology, and subservience to the moneyed interests that fund the GOP, will determine what Republicans do when they take power, just as they always have.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.