Trump’s move to replace Lina Khan exposes JD Vance’s fake populism

In recent years, a younger generation of Republicans — including Vice President-elect JD Vance — have tried to persuade their party to (partially) reconsider its traditional subservience to corporate interests. If they truly want to be the party of the working class, despising college professors and government workers may not be enough. What if they combined this with a genuine skepticism of corporate power and a willingness to use government to police monopolies and ensure that markets work for everyone?

It was an interesting idea. But even if Vance and his allies were serious — and there are plenty of reasons to doubt that — the new Trump in the White House is going in a different direction. In Donald Trump’s second administration, big business will have even more influence than in his first, and the dream of a Republican Party that cares about voters’ wallets, not just CEOs’ salaries, will be postponed again. The idea that this government will be “populist” in the truest sense of the word seems more like a joke every day.

Trump has already tapped more than a dozen billionaires and Wall Street tycoons to fill Cabinet and advisory positions. He dines with industry lobbyists and promises regulatory exemptions for large companies. And on Tuesday he confirmed that he would replace Lina Khan, the government’s most prominent campaigner against corporate power, as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Under Khan, the FTC has been at the center of some of the most significant actions on markets and monopolies in the past four years. Along with Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Khan has revitalized antitrust enforcement, challenging huge mergers and filing lawsuits against tech companies over their exploitative practices.

Although not all of Khan’s antitrust actions have been successful, she has achieved some notable victories. Earlier this year, the FTC sued the proposed merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, saying the merger would raise prices and harm workers. After a judge sided with the FTC and state regulators, Albertsons pulled out of the deal.

Although wealthy donors from both parties despise Khan, her controversial relationship with big business, particularly the tech industry, has won her some fans on the right. “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration who I think is doing a pretty good job,” Vance said earlier this year. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said her previous criticism of Amazon was “exactly why she was a good choice for the FTC.”

Hawley is just one Republican who has described himself as an anti-business crusader. He has introduced a bill to ban corporate political donations, which he said would “hold corporate America responsible for drowning out the voices of the American people.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, once supported a unionization effort at an Amazon factory, but only because he believed the company was too “woke” and should be punished.

The support for Khan from these “Khan conservatives” and the forlorn hope that Trump’s “populism” had anything to do with the economy led some to question whether Trump would actually keep Khan in office. The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board warned in July: “Mr. Vance could lobby Mr. Trump to reappoint her for a second term.” Instead, Trump has chosen FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as her successor. When Trump announced Ferguson on his Truth Social platform, he wrote, “Andrew has a proven track record of opposing Big Tech’s censorship.” But that hostility only comes to the fore when Ferguson believes tech companies are censoring conservatives. He recently praised Elon Musk, owner of In fact, Musk regularly silences his own critics on X and files lawsuits to suppress statements he doesn’t like.

Ferguson’s proposal to lead the agency, first reported by Punchbowl News, shows he will largely reverse Khan’s tough 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 companies don’t like) and ending “Lina Khan’s war on mergers.” And to keep Big Tech from worrying too much, he promises to “end the FTC’s attempt to become an AI regulator.”

It should surprise no one 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 angry at companies when they see a threat to their party interests. Likewise, they will condemn corporate “wokeness” when companies celebrate Pride Month, but they don’t care if those same companies drive up prices, treat workers badly, or pollute communities. For all the Khanservatives’ claims to rethink their party’s stance toward corporations, they lack a broader vision of how much power corporations should have, how government should ensure the proper functioning of markets, or what constitutes real competition in the public interest. They’re happy to see the FTC and the government in general return to a knee-jerk view that companies should be able to do pretty much whatever they want — as long as it’s conservative officials who determine where the lines are .

Now the populist claims of Vance and his allies are being tested. Will the business-minded officials running key agencies in the new Trump administration reverse the Biden administration’s efforts to seize corporate power? What about the FTC’s recent “Click to Cancel” rule, which requires that canceling a subscription or gym membership be as easy as signing up in the first place? What about tackling “junk fees” or banning onerous non-compete clauses? Based on Trump’s actions since the election, all of these moves could be in jeopardy.

It’s not just the FTC — we could see the Trump administration end efforts started by Biden to better treat airline passengers or follow through on threats to neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from fraud and abuses in the financial industry (Elon Musk has said he wants to “delete” the CFPB. Here’s the true measure of the mendacity of the Republican claim to populism: Over the next four years, watch how often the administration resorts to the On the consumer side when they come into conflict with corporate interests, I bet on “almost never”.

Perhaps Vance was always serious when he said he wanted a truly populist Republican Party, 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 Republicans will determine what Republicans do when they take power, as they always have.