Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - May 05, 2025


TCB at the FTC, Interview with Commissioner Andrew Ferguson | TRIGGERED Ep.239


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

159.06158

Word count

6,328

Sentence count

412

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Triggered, host Don Jr. Jones sits down with FTC Commissioner Andrew F. Ferguson to discuss the Biden Pill Penalty, the need to protect the elderly, and the need for consumer protection in the 21st century.

Transcript

Transcripts from "Triggered - Donald Trump Jr" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:06:23.000 Hey guys, welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
00:06:27.000 And today is going to be a fun one.
00:06:29.000 So guys, make sure that you're liking, sharing, subscribing.
00:06:33.000 Keep getting the message out.
00:06:35.000 If you miss the show here on Rumble or if you have your friends, they get podcasts different ways.
00:06:39.000 You can go over to Apple.
00:06:40.000 You can go to Spotify Podcasts.
00:06:42.000 If you missed the show here on Rumble, again, make sure everyone you know sees these things.
00:06:47.000 That's how we break through the wall.
00:06:48.000 That's how we break through the noise.
00:06:50.000 Take on the corporate media and get it out there.
00:06:52.000 For all the headlines that we spotlight here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, like minute by minute, MXM, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
00:07:04.000 And don't forget about some of our brave sponsors, people who have the guts.
00:07:11.000 Joe Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act is a disaster for America's seniors.
00:07:17.000 Democrats snuck in a provision to raid Medicare and fund green energy giveaways for their special interest donors.
00:07:25.000 But it gets even worse.
00:07:27.000 The Biden pill penalty is undermining the development of life-saving pills.
00:07:33.000 We've already seen a 70% drop in the development of pill-based treatments.
00:07:38.000 Since 2021.
00:07:40.000 The Biden pill penalty is a threat to our fight against everything from cancer to diabetes.
00:07:47.000 Joe Biden broke Medicare, but President Trump can fix it.
00:07:51.000 Call Congress and tell them to end the Biden pill penalty now.
00:07:56.000 Tell Congress to end the Biden pill penalty.
00:08:00.000 Take action and go to seniors for the number for seniors for better care dot com.
00:08:07.000 Again, that's the number four in there instead of the word for seniors for better care dot com.
00:08:15.000 Prepare for the future and diversify your savings with the Birch Gold Group.
00:08:19.000 Look, in the new year with my father back in office, you're going to have a lot more money in your paycheck.
00:08:23.000 And that means you're going to have a lot more opportunity to plan for the years and the decades ahead.
00:08:28.000 One way you can do that is by diversifying your portfolio into gold.
00:08:32.000 For over 20 years, Birch Gold Group has helped thousands of Americans protect their savings by converting an IRA or a 401k into an IRA investment.
00:08:40.000 To learn more, text Don Jr., D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898 and claim you're free.
00:08:53.000 no obligation, InfoKit on Gold.
00:08:55.000 That's Don Jr. to the number 989898.
00:08:59.000 What do you have to lose?
00:09:00.000 Educate yourself.
00:09:01.000 Check it out.
00:09:02.000 So, Burna Technologies.
00:09:04.000 They make these.
00:09:05.000 We talk about it all the time.
00:09:07.000 Protecting yourself in a time of crisis and doing it with companies who support you.
00:09:11.000 That's why I've partnered with Berna, a leader in self-defense and an alternative to lethal force.
00:09:18.000 For those of you who maybe don't like guns or don't want that, you know, there's...
00:09:22.000 Still ways that you can protect yourself.
00:09:24.000 They're created by an avid group of gun owners.
00:09:28.000 Burna provides civilians, law enforcement offers, and security professionals with a safe and reliable and effective non-lethal alternative to traditional firearms.
00:09:38.000 The Burna launchers are effective, easy to use, and legal in all 50 states.
00:09:43.000 And most importantly, they will stop a threat when it matters most.
00:09:47.000 Burna's powerful kinetic and tear gas ammunition will And they share your values and understand the importance of self-defense.
00:10:08.000 So have peace of mind and protect yourself.
00:10:11.000 Visit Burna.com slash Don Jr.
00:10:14.000 B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash D-O-N-J-R and receive 10% off my curated Burna bundles. 0.69
00:10:23.000 That's B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash D-O-N-J-R. 1.00
00:10:26.000 So check them out.
00:10:27.000 Support those who support us.
00:10:30.000 Guys, joining me now, FTC, Federal Trade Commission, Commissioner Andrew Ferguson.
00:10:37.000 Andrew, welcome.
00:10:37.000 How are you?
00:10:38.000 I'm well.
00:10:39.000 Thanks, Don.
00:10:39.000 Glad to be here.
00:10:40.000 So, Commissioner, thank you for taking the time.
00:10:42.000 Could you start?
00:10:43.000 By giving us perhaps a big-picture view of the role of the FTC and why you really chose to get involved and take this role?
00:10:51.000 Sure.
00:10:52.000 Thanks again for having me.
00:10:53.000 So the FTC is more than 100 years old, and we've got two mandates.
00:10:58.000 We enforce the antitrust laws, and we enforce the consumer protection laws.
00:11:02.000 So the antitrust laws, you read about in the newspaper all the time.
00:11:05.000 That's like mergers, price-fixing cartels, things like that.
00:11:10.000 But one of our missions that goes under the radar a lot is our consumer protection.
00:11:14.000 And that's like scams, frauds.
00:11:18.000 It's a lot of your interactions with businesses online, like the rules governing signing up for subscriptions.
00:11:24.000 Customer service, things like that.
00:11:26.000 It's one of the most valuable things that the agency does.
00:11:29.000 It gets a little less sort of press attention.
00:11:31.000 It's super important for the country, especially our work on protecting the elderly and veterans from scams.
00:11:37.000 Yeah, super important, but not quite as newsworthy or clickbaity as taking all the oligarchs, right?
00:11:44.000 That's right.
00:11:45.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:11:46.000 So what are the top priorities right now for the Trump-Vance Federal Trade Commission?
00:11:52.000 So we've got a couple.
00:11:53.000 The first is, you know, we want to protect Americans and American families from sort of like corporate power when it's exercised in ways that really affect how Americans live out their daily lives.
00:12:04.000 So, you know, part of that is, you know, Americans' interactions online with big tech, and that's definitely what gets the most news.
00:12:12.000 But it's a lot more than that.
00:12:13.000 You know, we have a real health care crisis in this country.
00:12:16.000 Health care is super expensive.
00:12:18.000 It can be very difficult to get.
00:12:20.000 And our markets are complicated, but the FTC has a very long history of protecting Americans in healthcare.
00:12:27.000 We have an unbelievably successful track record in policing hospital mergers to make sure that hospitals, especially in rural areas, don't merge in a way that can raise their prices.
00:12:38.000 And then the other thing the FTC under President Trump is really going to focus on is protecting workers.
00:12:43.000 So the antitrust laws protect workers.
00:12:46.000 They protect workers from things like...
00:12:48.000 You know, wage fixing arrangements.
00:12:50.000 They also protect them from other forms of collusion.
00:12:53.000 One of the forms of collusion that affects American workers that really concerns me are DEI metrics.
00:12:58.000 What you really don't want are businesses getting together behind closed doors and saying, hey, like, let's all agree.
00:13:04.000 That we're going to hire on the following DEI bases, and we're not going to depart from that.
00:13:09.000 That's a potential antitrust problem that the commission is going to look at very strongly and take very seriously.
00:13:15.000 That seems to be a major problem right now.
00:13:17.000 And again, whether it's done behind closed doors included on or everyone just agrees this is the way we're going to do it, because what we've seen, the bloom of that insanity for the last few years seems to be crushing, but also crushing for shareholder value.
00:13:34.000 If someone's hired simply because they check boxes and not based on any kind of capability or merit, that seems to be a real problem.
00:13:44.000 Totally agree.
00:13:45.000 And another area that this is taking place is so-called ESG, where you get businesses that are basically often publicly agreeing, hey, we're not going to invest in fossil fuels, and the reason we're going to give is that it's bad for the environment.
00:14:01.000 That's terrible for shareholder value.
00:14:03.000 I mean, like, you know, if these are profitable businesses producing stuff that Americans need to run our cars and our factories and our homes, and these businesses are just agreeing with each other that we're not going to invest in these things.
00:14:14.000 It's terrible for shareholders.
00:14:16.000 It's terrible for consumers.
00:14:17.000 It's terrible for workers.
00:14:18.000 This basically went unaddressed in the previous four years, except by some Republican states who started taking it very seriously.
00:14:24.000 We're looking at this right now.
00:14:26.000 It's really important to us.
00:14:27.000 So, you know, historically, what has the FTC sort of gotten right?
00:14:32.000 And where do you think perhaps they've gotten it wrong over the last few years?
00:14:35.000 I think that the FTC does its best work when it's acting like a cop, when it sees someone breaking the law and it goes to court, and it does its best or its worst work when it's a regulator.
00:14:47.000 And traditionally, the FTC, we've had rulemaking power for a long time, but the FTC has exercised it pretty sparingly.
00:14:53.000 And then in the last four years...
00:14:55.000 The FTC went on sort of a rulemaking bonanza, you know, with some rules estimated to cost half a trillion dollars.
00:15:03.000 And I think that when the FTC is sort of acting like Congress and making laws, that's when it's doing its worst work.
00:15:10.000 It does its best work when it's basically patrolling our markets.
00:15:13.000 And if it sees a business engaging in real dishonesty or anti-competitive behavior, it takes them to court.
00:15:22.000 The FTC does its best work when it understands that business is the engine that drives growth, innovation, and opportunity for all Americans.
00:15:32.000 And it sees this job as making sure business plays by the rules, but if it's playing by the rules, the FTC stays out of the mix and lets the markets do their thing.
00:15:39.000 And that wasn't the vibe of the last four years.
00:15:41.000 It really was not.
00:15:42.000 Yeah, so obviously as a business guy myself and someone who's run these things, you know, the regulatory framework is perhaps more important than even a tax framework or so many other things.
00:15:51.000 What are you guys actively doing to, again, minimize the draconian nature of some of those things?
00:15:57.000 I mean, you mentioned some of these programs cost half a trillion dollars.
00:16:01.000 I mean, that's a lot of money.
00:16:03.000 It's bigger than the market cap of the vast majority of companies in existence.
00:16:09.000 How do you change that direction and do it quickly so that that stuff isn't compounded and just made worse and or destroy?
00:16:17.000 The potential of a lot of great businesses before they can really get off the ground.
00:16:21.000 Yeah, it's a really good question.
00:16:23.000 So, I mean, to be honest, it starts at the top.
00:16:25.000 You need a president that is committed to this and is directing all the agencies to use their resources to deregulate.
00:16:34.000 Because if you don't, you'll just have sort of like a...
00:16:38.000 Islands of deregulation while the rest of the government continues sort of the regulatory impulse.
00:16:43.000 So it starts at the top.
00:16:44.000 The president has issued EO after EO directing agencies and the whole government to attack regulations.
00:16:51.000 The one that we're most focused on right now came out a couple weeks ago and it told the FTC to lead the whole government's charge on scouring the entire code of federal regulations.
00:17:02.000 For regulations that injure competition, that make it harder for businesses to compete, to grow, to make great products for Americans, to hire American workers, and to recommend back over to the White House, here are a bunch that you should delete, here are a bunch that you should change.
00:17:19.000 And we've begun that process.
00:17:21.000 It's a huge undertaking.
00:17:23.000 I mean, the Code of Federal Regulations is hundreds of thousands of pages.
00:17:26.000 It's tens and tens of thousands of gargantuan rules.
00:17:30.000 We've asked the public, tell us the rules that are preventing you from growing your business.
00:17:35.000 Tell us the rules that are preventing you from entering a market, from innovating, so that we can look at them and recommend them for deletion.
00:17:41.000 We are going to be issuing guidance to all the agency heads this week.
00:17:45.000 Tell us which ones you think are in your portfolio that are anti-competitive so we can recommend them for deletion.
00:17:50.000 And most importantly, we're doing this in like 90 days, which for federal government work is unprecedentedly fast.
00:17:57.000 But that's been the most important change that this administration has imposed from previous ones is deregulate and deregulate as quickly as you can.
00:18:06.000 And that's how you got to get it done, because every government only has a couple years to get this done before all the litigation hits, midterms, etc.
00:18:14.000 And the president has understood this, and that's why we're moving fast.
00:18:17.000 So, you know, obviously you can do a lot of that with executive order.
00:18:20.000 How do you codify some of these things into law so that, you know, the next administration, if it's a Democratic administration, can't just, with a stroke of a pen, put on all the regulations?
00:18:29.000 All their lobbyist buddies, all of the people in the swamp who've never created anything, who've never built anything, but sort of have peddled power and influence very effectively.
00:18:37.000 How do you make that a long-lasting end rather than simply a means for the meantime?
00:18:45.000 Yeah, so I think part of it is when you write...
00:18:49.000 So we've got the APA, right?
00:18:50.000 We've got the law that tells us how we're supposed to do regulations.
00:18:52.000 And then we've got decades of precedent built up on the APA that have added a bunch of layers of work for the agencies when they want to regulate, but also when they want to deregulate.
00:19:02.000 The way that a lot of courts have suggested the APA is written is that deregulating can take just as much work and time as writing the regulation.
00:19:10.000 I think the approach the administration is taking this time is...
00:19:13.000 Deregulate because we think that these rules are illegal, and let's just keep going.
00:19:17.000 Find them, delete them, move on.
00:19:20.000 And yeah, there'll be litigation, but I think that the Department of Justice is going to take very aggressive positions in promoting rescissions of regulations.
00:19:29.000 But that's how you do it.
00:19:30.000 It's not just changing enforcement priorities.
00:19:32.000 It's actually going into the code and being like, we're deleting it.
00:19:35.000 We're formally announcing this isn't a rule anymore under the APA.
00:19:39.000 And then if a subsequent administration wants to come back in and regulate again, they've got to write the rule all over again, and that takes a lot of work.
00:19:46.000 But that's the difference, is that in a lot of previous administrations, when you do deregulating, you'll delete a rule here or there, and then you'll issue a bunch of guidance that says, well, we're not going to enforce this rule this way, we're not going to enforce that rule that way.
00:19:57.000 No, because they can just flip that guidance January 21st as soon as the new administration comes in.
00:20:02.000 You've got to rip them out of the code, and that's what the president has been ordering the agencies to do, and that's what this process is.
00:20:14.000 What does that look like in practice?
00:20:33.000 Yeah, so it's two types of things.
00:20:35.000 The first are mergers.
00:20:38.000 And the mergers come to the agency because we've got a law that says if you want to merge, you have to basically present your merger to the agency.
00:20:44.000 And then you have to wait while the agency runs an assessment on whether the merger is lawful.
00:20:50.000 And I think that's going to be one of the biggest changes from the last administration.
00:20:53.000 We're already seeing it.
00:20:55.000 Look.
00:20:56.000 Congress has rules about which mergers are competitive and which are anti-competitive, and then tells the agencies, if you think they're anti-competitive, you have to go to court.
00:21:05.000 And that seems like a pretty reasonable system, but right underneath the surface of that, there's all sorts of things that the agencies, DOJ and FTC, can do that can slow mergers down.
00:21:16.000 And it happened a lot in the last four years, which is a merger comes in and just disappears in the agency.
00:21:22.000 And the agency sits on it for months and months and months.
00:21:25.000 And emerging parties are like, what's going on?
00:21:28.000 Like, what do you think the problems are?
00:21:29.000 We can work with you.
00:21:30.000 Like, if you think there are problems, tell us and we'll fix them.
00:21:32.000 And the agencies just sort of go dark.
00:21:35.000 And it seems, I've talked to a lot of CEOs about this.
00:21:38.000 A lot of people are saying, we started to get the impression that the goal was wait us out.
00:21:42.000 And dry up the mergers so that there wouldn't be any mergers because the last administration didn't like M&A at all.
00:21:48.000 Yeah, the process is the punishment, right?
00:21:50.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:21:51.000 No, it's exactly right.
00:21:52.000 And I think that this is a huge problem because M&A is part of how we innovate.
00:21:57.000 And I think we need to be very realistic that this is how it works.
00:22:00.000 Innovators don't normally have their own capital.
00:22:02.000 They've got great ideas, but they need access to markets and they need access to capital to build their ideas.
00:22:07.000 No one will invest in an idea if they think investing locks their investment forever and they can never get it back out.
00:22:13.000 And one of the ways investors get a return on their investment in innovation is that someone can come buy the company and take it to market, help it grow quickly.
00:22:24.000 And if you dry up M&A, if everyone thinks the regulators are just going to sort of stamp on M&A and make it really hard to do, who would invest?
00:22:32.000 Who would lock their money into some poor, innovative company that can't get bought out?
00:22:37.000 And I think we need to be really, really serious about recognizing M&A is part of how this country grows.
00:22:42.000 It's part of how we innovate.
00:22:44.000 It's part of how we avoid becoming Europe, which we don't want to do.
00:22:47.000 And the FTC's job needs to be take a merger.
00:22:51.000 Within the timeline Congress has set, if we think it's illegal and we can win in court, we should go to court and be honest about it.
00:22:57.000 And if we can't, get out of the way.
00:22:59.000 We brought back this thing called early termination, which is where we end investigations before the waiting period is expired.
00:23:06.000 And we say, nope, we think that this is so obviously pro-competitive.
00:23:09.000 Go ahead.
00:23:09.000 We're not even telling you to wait the full time.
00:23:11.000 Get out the door.
00:23:12.000 The Biden administration banned early termination.
00:23:14.000 They just refused to do it at all.
00:23:16.000 We've already brought it back.
00:23:17.000 We've been granting dozens of early terminations.
00:23:20.000 I think it's super important for promoting regulatory certainty and clarity.
00:23:23.000 I hear from CEOs all the time.
00:23:25.000 Look, you can tell us you're going to kill us as long as we know when it's happening, on what time frame and why.
00:23:31.000 We can all adjust. 0.92
00:23:32.000 We'll plan accordingly.
00:23:33.000 We know what's coming.
00:23:34.000 And that is the most important thing we can do, is be very open and honest about our process, about our timelines, about why we're going to do what we're going to do so that businesses can plan, grow, innovate, and make this country achieve the golden age that the president has told all of us he's after.
00:23:51.000 So, you know, a big concern lately has been sort of these acquisitions by foreign conglomerates, perhaps even American conglomerates that are just proxies for foreign nations, sometimes bad actors.
00:24:04.000 Is that within the scope of the FTC and should there be sort of a heightened concern and scrutiny there if it is, whether it's from an economic or certainly a national security standpoint?
00:24:15.000 Yeah, I mean, so the answer in my view is yes.
00:24:19.000 Now, like antitrust professor at some Ivy League school would be like, well, that's not the traditional doctrine.
00:24:24.000 But when you're an enforcer and you've got limited resources and you have to decide which issues you really want to focus on, a potential merger.
00:24:33.000 That sort of ties the American market more to the market of a potential foreign adversary absolutely should matter.
00:24:38.000 And we should be looking at that really closely.
00:24:41.000 And so part of making America competitive is not just making sure our businesses are competing with each other.
00:24:47.000 It's making sure America is competitive against the rest of the world.
00:24:51.000 And I think it absolutely should be relevant for how we are thinking about enforcement generally, even if it wouldn't be an argument that we would make to a judge.
00:25:01.000 Activity that diminishes America's ability to compete with the rest of the world needs to matter to how we're making enforcement decisions.
00:25:09.000 It would be crazy for it not to matter.
00:25:11.000 Are there sort of sector-specific concerns that you guys are more focused on than others?
00:25:16.000 You know, I know, you know, a big thing that you're doing on, you've gone after sort of big tech.
00:25:21.000 I think I know that was, you know, Google, Meta, Uber.
00:25:25.000 You know, those seems to be the big one.
00:25:27.000 And definitely, you know, sort of concerning to so many Americans who, you know, definitely have been sort of blindsided and sort of single-handedly targeted more, you know, certainly if you're on the conservative side of things.
00:25:37.000 How do you deal with that?
00:25:38.000 Yeah, so...
00:25:39.000 A couple of issues give me concern.
00:25:41.000 You're right about big tech and DOJ has the two big Google cases.
00:25:45.000 We have the Meta case.
00:25:46.000 And for me, this isn't really sort of like a big antitrust crusade.
00:25:50.000 It's just me as an American recognizing what became very clear to all of us in 2020, which is there are a handful of companies that exercise unbelievable amounts of power over our social lives, our political discourse, our elections, our ability to communicate with one another, to communicate our ideas to each other.
00:26:09.000 And basically, companies like Meta or Google, they're just different.
00:26:14.000 And we need to be really realistic about the importance of making sure that none of these companies can diminish the freedom that you and I take for granted and that we all want to make sure that the government can't do this to us, but making sure that a giant private company can't exercise huge control over our social and political life needs to matter too.
00:26:33.000 But this isn't just about big tech.
00:26:35.000 The market that gives me kind of the most concern on a day-in-day basis is healthcare.
00:26:40.000 All of us have to use it.
00:26:41.000 We have to use it all the time.
00:26:43.000 The president issued an EO to the whole government to take steps to make our health care markets more competitive, to drive our health care prices down.
00:26:52.000 He specifically focused on what he called middlemen.
00:26:55.000 We've got ongoing litigation against the PBMs.
00:26:59.000 We have a huge study on PBM competitiveness that we're running.
00:27:05.000 Really important to me.
00:27:06.000 That's the middleman, so people understand.
00:27:09.000 That's the middleman sort of between the actual pharma manufacturers who often are the ones that get vilified, you know, and your local pharmacy.
00:27:17.000 I mean, they're the guys taking sort of huge margins at certain times, you know, to do all these things when they're not actually doing anything.
00:27:24.000 But there's what there's only three PBMs in the whole country.
00:27:26.000 Right.
00:27:26.000 So there's, you know, even if it's not a monopoly, I mean, you got three people controlling the flow for very, you know, for all the pharmacies across the nation.
00:27:34.000 That seems to be a real big problem.
00:27:36.000 Yeah, and, you know, I just visited...
00:27:39.000 Very near to where I grew up in rural Virginia, an independent pharmacy, and just sat with a pharmacist for an hour and was like, what's it look like from your vantage point in the market, like interactions with PBMs?
00:27:50.000 And it was really illuminating.
00:27:51.000 It's hard to be an independent pharmacist out there, and independent pharmacies are part of the lifeblood of small-town America.
00:27:57.000 I mean, if you go down Main Street in a small town in rural Virginia, you've got a hardware store, you've got a pharmacy, you've got churches, and you've got a family restaurant or two, and that's sort of the beating heart of the community.
00:28:10.000 And independent pharmacies are closing all over the country, and it's really important to me.
00:28:14.000 And not just do we have three PBMs that control the overwhelming majority of the PBM market.
00:28:19.000 They're vertically integrated.
00:28:21.000 Yeah, some of them actually control some of the biggest pharmacy chains in the world as well.
00:28:24.000 So it's a little bit of a problem, right?
00:28:27.000 Yeah, and it's a real cause for concern.
00:28:28.000 And at the end of the day, you've got pharma companies up at the top of the chain.
00:28:34.000 That are coming up with innovative therapies and drugs all the time.
00:28:38.000 We have an entire system of laws designed to incent them to do that. 0.99
00:28:41.000 And then you've got the pharmacists that are actually serving customers like you and me on the ground.
00:28:45.000 And then we've got this sort of structure in the middle that actually controls parts up the chain and parts down the chain.
00:28:51.000 It's a real concern.
00:28:52.000 It's been a concern of the president since his first administration, and he's instructed the government to look at this.
00:28:57.000 We're sort of at the cutting edge of examining the effect that PBMs have on our markets, and that is one of my top priorities.
00:29:03.000 How does the healthcare priority relate to food supply and protecting supply chains as well?
00:29:09.000 Yeah, I mean, supply chain resiliency is super important.
00:29:12.000 And this is actually one of the sort of understated effects of good antitrust enforcement.
00:29:19.000 You know, monopoly is dangerous, not just to the prices that you and I pay at the store or online.
00:29:24.000 It's also really bad if you get into a crisis and you've only got one supplier of something.
00:29:29.000 If that supplier can't meet the demand...
00:29:31.000 We're in real trouble.
00:29:32.000 But if you've got lots of competitors in the supply chain, you know, if one falls through because of a crisis, others can fill in the gap.
00:29:40.000 And we saw what can happen if you've got sort of monopoly problems during COVID when the supply chain becomes really difficult.
00:29:46.000 And good antitrust enforcement that makes sure that there is robust competition means that you won't necessarily have these disasters that lead to massive shortages.
00:29:56.000 And that's one of the reasons that I care about so much.
00:29:58.000 But food supply, you know, there have been concerns for a very long time about, like, meatpacking and potential monopoly in meatpacking.
00:30:06.000 And we saw it when there were all sorts of meat shortages during COVID.
00:30:09.000 And our adversary is controlling a lot of those as well.
00:30:12.000 I mean, China owns a lot of the meatpackers. 0.85
00:30:16.000 Yeah, and China bought our principal pork company a couple years ago, and having grown up in farm country, it was kind of scary to think about China controlling that much of our food supply.
00:30:28.000 And so I think antitrust can help with supply chain resiliency in a really important way, and that's why it's important to take it seriously.
00:30:36.000 But at the end of the day, this isn't sort of like anti-business crusade.
00:30:40.000 Antitrust is pro-business because if you wind up with monopoly, then you get Congress coming in and regulating directly, and that's just much worse than having sort of case-by-case antitrust enforcement that promotes resiliency, allows for innovation, and avoids regulation.
00:30:55.000 So, Andrew, I would imagine the other place that affects so many people on here, because I know I see it as well, is sort of the inconsistency in the insurance markets.
00:31:05.000 Does the FTC take control of some of that?
00:31:07.000 Because everything is just sort of delay and deny, delay and deny.
00:31:12.000 It almost feels to the point like, what's the purpose of having insurance, even though sometimes you're mandated to actually have it?
00:31:17.000 But the premiums are so high, your deductibles are so high, that from the healthcare standpoint, unless you get hit by a bus, you're basically uninsured.
00:31:28.000 Are there things that you guys are looking at to do that?
00:31:30.000 Because I imagine from a day-to-day basis, you know, outside of healthcare, that's probably the next one that affects the average American the most daily.
00:31:39.000 No, you're definitely right about that.
00:31:40.000 So our Congress, for reasons you have to go back in time and ask them, wrote out insurance from our mandate, like directly wrote it out.
00:31:49.000 The states generally sort of regulate insurance directly, but...
00:31:52.000 You know, your relationship with your insurer is driven in part by the price of health care.
00:31:57.000 I mean, the insurer's willingness to cover what they cover, why, etc., is largely a function of sort of health care prices.
00:32:05.000 And that is something that we have to take very seriously.
00:32:08.000 And one of the things we really care about is making sure that, you know...
00:32:13.000 The way that pricing normally works in these healthcare markets is hospitals sit down and negotiate with the insurers on what prices they're going to charge for various therapies, treatments, interventions, etc.
00:32:25.000 And we promote competition in the hospital markets.
00:32:29.000 And if you have a hospital monopoly, they can go to the insurers and being like, yeah, I know what you think you should pay.
00:32:35.000 We're going to make you pay a lot more. 0.96
00:32:36.000 And that is where the FTC does some of its best work, is up the chain, making sure that when...
00:32:42.000 When insurers are sitting down with health care providers and negotiating, health care providers don't have so much economic power that they can command high prices, which the insurers are then going to pass on to you and me.
00:32:53.000 And so that's our role there.
00:32:55.000 You hear those stories all the time.
00:32:57.000 You go in for a minor procedure.
00:32:58.000 That'll be $27,000 bill to your insurance, which screws everyone, including yourself and your deductibles. 0.66
00:33:04.000 But then you're like, well, what if I pay cash?
00:33:05.000 It's like, oh, that's four bucks.
00:33:07.000 I'm like, wait, what do you mean?
00:33:11.000 That definitely seems something to be, let's just call it, a little bit disjointed.
00:33:15.000 And this is also a big problem for businesses outside of insurance because a lot of businesses in America self-insure.
00:33:20.000 A lot of them are covering a lot of this themselves rather than having an insurer do it.
00:33:24.000 The insurer basically helps them with administration.
00:33:26.000 But this can jack up their costs.
00:33:28.000 And if you've got sort of monopoly power being wielded by health care providers, businesses feel the pinch the same as you and me, and they have to pass that on to you and me.
00:33:37.000 And so part of how we make sure that businesses aren't drowning in this, too, is promoting competition among healthcare providers.
00:33:42.000 Even for businesses who wouldn't think about this, if they're self-insuring, as a huge proportion of American businesses do, they feel the pinch, too.
00:33:50.000 And so part of how we are helping businesses outside of the healthcare markets avoid high cost of healthcare is promoting competition in the healthcare markets.
00:33:59.000 So Andrew, what specific regulations are still on the books that you see as being anti-competitive?
00:34:04.000 And what's the sort of administrative law process to deregulate wherever that's appropriate?
00:34:10.000 Yeah, so I think sort of the classic example outside of the FTC are basically licensing type regulations or regulations that require people in order to participate in a business to check a bunch of boxes.
00:34:23.000 Those are classic barrier to entry type regulations.
00:34:26.000 They're often imposed.
00:34:28.000 By incumbent business participants who don't want to have to deal with upstart challengers.
00:34:33.000 Yeah, you can't possibly fit the bill even if you have the end product.
00:34:36.000 You just can't make the list to qualify.
00:34:39.000 That's right.
00:34:40.000 We don't care.
00:34:40.000 Or we're going to make the cost of qualifying so high that we're going to eliminate a lot of people from even participating.
00:34:47.000 And again, you know...
00:34:48.000 Regulations impose costs.
00:34:50.000 They always do.
00:34:51.000 And big businesses can generally comply because they've got good cash flow.
00:34:55.000 It's the upstarts.
00:34:56.000 It's the new guys who don't have the great cash flow yet but have a great idea that could revolutionize an industry and make all of our lives better.
00:35:03.000 Those high-cost regulations big businesses can cover and the little businesses and the innovators and the founders cannot.
00:35:10.000 Those are the ones we're looking for.
00:35:12.000 So the process that is going to be set up by this EO and by the APA is we're going to get public input on People's actual experiences with these regulations that prevented them from coming up with a good idea and getting it to market.
00:35:24.000 And then the agency heads are also going to give us their list and say, look, we think these are probably anti-competitive.
00:35:30.000 And then I've got armies of lawyers and economists who are going to take several weeks, because the president wants this done and wants it done quickly, looking at these things.
00:35:38.000 And then we're sending a list with our recommendations back to OMB and the White House and saying, we think you should delete these and we should delete these tomorrow.
00:35:44.000 And that's our recommendation.
00:35:46.000 And then the APA has a series of ways that you can delete regulations and the agencies will have our recommendations and our proposals for deletion.
00:35:54.000 And the president will be like, okay, time, start, go deleting.
00:35:57.000 And that's how it will go.
00:35:58.000 And then, of course, there will be litigation.
00:36:00.000 There always is.
00:36:02.000 But this is how you've got to get the ball rolling.
00:36:04.000 You can't let the fear of a lawsuit lead you to do nothing.
00:36:08.000 You've got to push the envelope.
00:36:09.000 And that is what this administration has done in an unprecedentedly helpful way.
00:36:14.000 It's like, push, push, push.
00:36:15.000 We'll deal with the litigation when it comes, but you've got to push because it's the only way to deregulate.
00:36:20.000 And that's what this is going to look like on my end.
00:36:22.000 So, I mean, it sounds like you've had a fairly aggressive first hundred days.
00:36:25.000 I hope the next hundred days is even more so.
00:36:28.000 But, you know, we've seen that, whether it's with DOJ, whether it's with the deportations of criminal legal aliens, you know, there has been a sort of a lot of lawfare, you know, pushing back.
00:36:39.000 You know, a district judge is able to overrule the president of the United States.
00:36:43.000 And I imagine, based on the way this has been done, obviously through very...
00:36:49.000 Partial and individually selected jurists, I imagine they'll try to do the same thing for the FTC.
00:36:56.000 How do you get around that?
00:36:58.000 Because, again, it does feel like a lot of it's designed just to be like, you know what?
00:37:01.000 We're going to wait it out.
00:37:02.000 We've got four years.
00:37:03.000 We'll kick the can down the road. 0.76
00:37:04.000 Let's see what happens at midterm.
00:37:06.000 We'll make it impossible for him to achieve his goals, even if those were the goals that were the mandate of the American people to get done.
00:37:11.000 And then we'll say, oh, look, they failed.
00:37:13.000 We're totally innocent on all of this, even if they've weaponized and manipulated a system.
00:37:17.000 Yeah, you're totally right about that.
00:37:19.000 What we have seen from district courts all over the country the last 100 days shocks even me.
00:37:26.000 And look, like I clerked on the Supreme Court.
00:37:28.000 I've been in the conservative legal movement, as they call it, for a long time.
00:37:31.000 I'm rarely shocked by this stuff.
00:37:33.000 The last 100 days have shocked me.
00:37:34.000 District judges in who knows where thinking that they wield the executive power that the Constitution gives the president and that we just elected the president to wield.
00:37:43.000 I think my view remains.
00:37:47.000 For all of the sort of bad apple district judges out there, the courts of appeals are more solid.
00:37:52.000 The Supreme Court is solid.
00:37:53.000 Push through.
00:37:54.000 Like, yes, the district judges are going to do what they're going to do.
00:37:56.000 Do not treat that as an insuperable obstacle.
00:37:59.000 Fight through the district court.
00:38:01.000 Fight into the appeals court.
00:38:02.000 Take it all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:38:04.000 Do not stop pushing.
00:38:05.000 This is often what happens is sort of like...
00:38:09.000 Bureaucratic exhaustion where you go, oh, well, we just had to fight all of the career bureaucrats to get this done and now we have to fight these district judges.
00:38:15.000 Fight.
00:38:16.000 Just keep fighting and fight as quickly as you can.
00:38:18.000 Expedited briefing schedules.
00:38:19.000 Get this thing out there.
00:38:21.000 Push as fast as you can.
00:38:22.000 Four years is not very long.
00:38:24.000 It just isn't.
00:38:24.000 And the only way to accomplish these objectives is to move swiftly.
00:38:28.000 Yeah, you got to get it right.
00:38:29.000 You got to make sure you're doing the right thing and you're checking the boxes.
00:38:32.000 But don't let time get in the way.
00:38:36.000 Check the boxes and then be ready to fight.
00:38:38.000 And I think that that's the president's impulse.
00:38:40.000 It's definitely the impulse at the FTC.
00:38:43.000 Well, I'm really glad to hear that.
00:38:50.000 Commissioner Andrew Ferguson of the Federal Trade Commission, thank you so much for being here.
00:38:54.000 Really appreciate it.
00:38:55.000 And I really look forward to seeing what you continue to do and just making sure we get this message out to people so they understand not just what you're doing, but also the obstacles that you are up against so they understand.
00:39:08.000 And hopefully we just get to some common sense ground, you know, that we can function as the country we deserve to function as.
00:39:13.000 Hear, hear.
00:39:14.000 Thanks a lot, Don.
00:39:15.000 Thank you very much, man.
00:39:16.000 Good talking to you.
00:39:17.000 Take care.
00:39:17.000 Guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
00:39:20.000 Remember to hit that like button, turn on your notifications, download the Rumble app on your smart TV.
00:39:27.000 If you're getting your podcast also on Apple or Spotify, you can get triggered right there.
00:39:31.000 If your friends get them that way, make sure they know, make sure you're subscribed.
00:39:36.000 So when we do one of these random episodes or we go at an odd time, You are aware.
00:39:41.000 Also, check out some of our incredible sponsors down below and in the video description.