UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Federal Trade Commission

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20580

Office of Acting Chairwoman

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

Opening Statement of Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

As Prepared for Delivery

Before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law

Of the Judiciary Committee

United States House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.

March 18, 2021

Chairman Cicilline, Ranking Member Buck, and members of the Subcommittee, thank 

you for the invitation to appear before you today. I am Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, Acting 

Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Promoting competition and protecting consumers is the FTC’s mission. But current 

market conditions across the economy have caused nearly everyone to question whether our 

competition laws and enforcement approaches are adequate to protect consumers from 

anticompetitive conduct and mergers.

Aggressive enforcement using the FTC’s existing authority can and should be 

complemented by this Committee’s work to sharpen antitrust laws and to impose broader 

market-wide restrictions that address pervasive anticompetitive conduct and conditions.

I believe the FTC must push antitrust law forward through bold agency action. 

Specifically, that means prioritizing deterrence and using the full range of the FTC’s authorities 

to stop unfair methods of competition.

The Commission has spent far too many of our enforcement dollars and limited staff 

hours to challenge mergers that are plainly illegal and should never have gotten out of the 

boardroom. It is clear we have a deterrence problem.

To address this we must develop a higher tolerance for litigation risk, advocating for the 

most effective remedies—including structural separations—and refusing to accept settlements 

that don’t fully correct harm. 

At the same time, we must lay the groundwork for success for new theories and more 

aggressive enforcement. One way we are doing just that is with our announcement this week of a 

working group with international and domestic partners to build a new approach to 

pharmaceutical merger enforcement. We also need to make sure our merger guidelines—
2

horizontal and vertical—chart an enforcement path that fully addresses competitive harms and is 

appropriately skeptical of claimed benefits.

In addition to making our enforcement actions more effective, we need to dust off some 

important tools that have languished too long in our toolbox. We should activate our unfair 

methods of competition rulemaking authority to prohibit anticompetitive conduct that is difficult 

to litigate on a case-by-case basis. And we should consider bringing standalone Section 5 claims 

in our competition cases more frequently. 

We can work hard to be strategic and aggressive with our toolbox, but we do face acute 

and urgent challenges in carrying out our mission, and that is where the work of Congress comes 

into play. 

First, resources. While Congress has been very generous recently in helping our 

resourcing catch up to the demand, we are not there yet. Just one new data point: in the first five 

months of this fiscal year, we processed 60% more HSR filings than we had on average over the 

past five years. In February of this year, we had more than twice as many filings as we did the 

year before. Even before this recent wave, filings had about doubled in the last ten years while 

our FTE count stayed flat.

`

Another pressing problem for the Commission is the ongoing threat from the courts to 

our authority under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act; a series of bad decisions limit our ability to 

enjoin illegal conduct and seek monetary redress. In its motion to dismiss the Commission’s 

antitrust complaint, Facebook cited these decisions and argued that Section 13(b) bars the suit.

Together, all five Commissioners wrote to Congress and asked that you swiftly restore the 

longstanding interpretation of Section 13(b); I hope you will consider that request.

On top of addressing those FTC-specific challenges, I also support efforts by this 

Committee to reform the antitrust laws more broadly. Even our most effective enforcement 

efforts are no substitute for legislative changes that clean up bad case law, impose clear 

presumptions, and reduce untenable burdens on enforcers. These changes would minimize the 

need to engage in tortured and expensive efforts to both measure and balance harm and 

efficiencies, particularly in cases where the facts support a clear theory of harm.

Changes to the enforcement framework can work in tandem with the broader restrictions 

on dominant platforms Congress is considering. I firmly believe that effective enforcement is a 

complement, not an alternative, to thoughtful regulation. 

Our antitrust laws protect the democratic ideal of fair participation in a free society. I 

strongly support legislation that will facilitate protecting not only consumers but all market 

participants—workers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, especially those in marginalized 

communities—from monopolistic practices and exclusionary conduct. 

I look forward to working with this Committee and others in Congress to consider the 

best balance of an enforcement and regulatory framework to promote competition and I welcome 

your questions.