FTC chair says he’d ‘obey lawful orders’ if Trump asked to drop an antitrust case like Meta’s

Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson has refused to commit to resisting President Donald Trump if he ordered the agency to drop its antitrust suit against Meta, saying he would “obey lawful orders” and calling the scenario “a hypothetical.” His comments, made at a tech policy event in Washington, DC, followed a session where Ferguson reaffirmed his belief that independent regulatory agencies are “not good for a democracy.”

Ferguson appeared at an antitrust-focused event hosted by Y Combinator on Wednesday, branded as the “Little Tech Competition Summit.” The FTC is set to begin its blockbuster anti-monopoly trial against Meta in just a couple of weeks, making a case that — in an extreme scenario — could break up the company. Yet Trump has proven willing to pardon allies or test legal bounds to support them. Ferguson has pledged strong fealty to him, declaring last month that Trump “is the chief executive and is vested with all the executive power in our government,” including the power to remove commissioners.

Asked by The Verge how he’d react if the president asked him to drop a case like Meta’s, Ferguson said, “the President’s head of the executive branch, and I think it’s important for me to obey lawful orders.” But, he added, “I think that the President recognizes that we’ve got to enforce the laws, so I’d be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.”

Ferguson said he would not entertain a hypothetical about whether an order like that would be lawful. “I can’t imagine it happening,” he said.

Trump has already taken unprecedented steps to assert power over independent agencies including the FTC, and Ferguson has so far welcomed them. Trump signed an executive order in February claiming that independent agency officials should be subject to “supervision and control” by the president. The following month, Trump broke decades of Supreme Court precedent by attempting to fire the agency’s two Democratic commissioners without cause, an act Ferguson said the president is empowered to take. Recently, The Verge first reported, FTC staff was instructed to stop labeling the agency as “independent” when describing it as a plaintiff in legal complaints.

Onstage at Wednesday’s event, Ferguson told Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan that Trump’s commissioner firings wouldn’t impact how tech founders interact with the agency, and the FTC chair took the opportunity to expand on his perspective about the agency’s independence. “My view about the FTC’s mission is entirely unchanged,” he said, adding that he’s “firmly of the view” that Trump had authority to fire his colleagues and that independent agencies are “not good for a democracy.” That’s because, he said, “all powerful executive branch officials” should be accountable to the people, ”and the only person in the executive branch that gets elected is the president.” 

Not long after Ferguson’s appearance at the Little Tech Competition Summit, a CNN reporter shared on X that Mark Zuckerberg was spotted walking into the West Wing of the White House. 

Alvaro Bedoya, one of the Democratic commissioners Trump has attempted to fire, has previously told The Washington Post that Ferguson is “no friend to Big Tech.” But, he wondered, what would happen if the White House called him up to ask him to settle a case or halt an investigation? “Will he obey?” Bedoya asked. That question, for now, remains unanswered.