FTC Will Go to Trial Against Meta: FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson
March 17, 2025
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10:12Now PlayingFTC Will Go to Trial Against Meta: FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson
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as posted by the channelUS Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson says the agency is ready to go to trial next month and break up Meta Platforms. The parent company of Facebook would be forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. “We’ve got some of the FTC’s best lawyers on it and we’re getting ready to go," Ferguson told Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde.
The US Federal Trade Commission is gearing up for a trial next month to break up Meta Platforms Inc. and has the resources it needs to police the deep-pocketed tech sector despite a government-wide cost slashing effort, according to agency Chairman Andrew Ferguson.
“We’re gearing up for trial,” Ferguson told Bloomberg TV in response to a question about whether the FTC would take forward a case to force Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. An eight-week trial is scheduled to start April 14. “We’ve got some of the FTC’s best lawyers on it and we’re getting ready to go.”
The case was filed at the end of the first Trump administration and was shepherded through pretrial proceedings by staff lawyers under former Chair Lina Khan.
To be sure, Ferguson doesn’t have the ability to slow or kill the Meta case even if he wanted to, since the commission is currently in a partisan, 2-2 deadlock.
Last week an FTC lawyer drew unwanted attention when he told a federal judge in Seattle that the agency needed to delay a trial over Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime subscription business, highlighting a detailed list of resource constraints, before walking the comments back several hours later.
Ferguson was emphatic that the agency is well-equipped to fullfill its antitrust and consumer protection mandates, while also praising President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency as “one of the most important things going in government right now.”
The FTC has been largely immune from cuts so far, though roughly a dozen probationary employees were recently terminated. “At the FTC, look, we’re a lean operation,” Ferguson said. “Our budget is less than half a billion dollars. We’ve only got around 1,300 employees and we deliver a lot of value for the American people.”
Ferguson said he has no particular animus towards the tech sector and said the agency works to protect consumers in other important areas. “It’s also health care and it’s protecting Americans as laborers.”
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