Sponsors (5)
Introduced March 13, 2025 by Mike Lee · Last progress March 13, 2025
The bill trades a single, potentially more efficient DOJ-led antitrust enforcement system that can speed and simplify merger review for businesses against the loss of independent FTC oversight and procedural protections, increasing risks of politicized enforcement, slower reviews from chokepoints, and reduced consumer protections.
Taxpayers, small-business owners, and financial institutions: antitrust enforcement is consolidated under the DOJ, reducing duplicate agency processes and creating a single federal point of contact for enforcement.
Small-business owners and financial institutions: businesses should see more predictable, faster merger review and fewer duplicative concurrence requirements, lowering procedural delays and compliance uncertainty.
Federal employees (FTC antitrust staff): the Act clarifies roles, records, funding, and assignment procedures for FTC antitrust personnel and assets, easing transitions and personnel planning during the reorganization.
Consumers, small-business owners, and taxpayers: centralizing antitrust authority at the DOJ reduces independent FTC oversight and concentrates power in the Attorney General, increasing the risk that enforcement will be politicized or vary with changing DOJ priorities.
Consumers and affected businesses: the FTC's ability to open new investigations and pursue certain administrative enforcement tools (including Section 5 actions) is limited during and after transition, which may delay or remove remedies for unfair competition.
Consumers and health-related organizations: narrowing or deleting FTC Act language like 'methods of competition' reduces the FTC's substantive authority to police unfair practices, potentially weakening consumer protections and oversight of health-sector conduct.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Transfers all FTC antitrust functions, personnel, assets, and funding to the Department of Justice and makes the Attorney General the primary federal antitrust enforcer.
Moves all federal antitrust enforcement work now handled by the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice. It shifts investigations, pending cases, employees, records, assets, and related funding into the DOJ Antitrust Division and changes multiple statutes so the Attorney General becomes the primary federal antitrust enforcement official. Sets a fixed transition period to complete transfers, limits the FTC’s ability to start new antitrust actions after the effective date, allows the Attorney General to reorganize the Antitrust Division, and updates the Clayton Act and related laws to remove or replace references to the FTC.