White House says Trump will nominate Joe Simons, a longtime antitrust lawyer, as head of FTC; nomination must still be confirmed by Senate
Tony Romm / Recode :
Context & Ripple Effects
The FTC had been operating without a confirmed head through most of Trump's first year, and the shortlist was political: earlier reporting had Trump weighing Utah AG Sean Reyes, who pressed the FTC to reopen its Google antitrust probe. Instead, the White House went with Joe Simons, a longtime antitrust lawyer — a conventional pick for an agency whose enforcement posture was under scrutiny.
The choice also completes a two-agency staffing picture: months earlier Trump installed ex-AT&T lobbyist Makan Delrahim, who had downplayed the AT&T-Time Warner merger as an antitrust problem, atop the DoJ antitrust unit. Notably, Simons would outlast his patron's patience — by 2020 the White House was reportedly looking to replace him after he [[a:957334|resisted efforts to crack down on social media companies over alleged anti-conservative bias]].
First-order effects
- Simons' nomination gives the FTC a confirmed chairman only if the Senate acts, leaving the agency's leadership — and its stance on pending matters like personalized-pricing disclosure — contingent on confirmation.
- The pick signals continuity-minded antitrust enforcement at the FTC, in contrast to the more overtly political candidate Reyes who had agitated for reopening the Google probe.
Second-order effects
- With Delrahim already running the DoJ antitrust division, merger review across both agencies now sits with officials seen as friendlier to large deals — raising the bar for challengers of transactions like AT&T-Time Warner.
- Advocates who wanted the FTC to pursue Google through the Reyes channel lose their inside track and must push enforcement through the agencies' own dockets instead.
Third-order effects
- The arc from this appointment to the reported 2020 replacement effort shows a structural tension: technocratic antitrust chiefs appointed for credibility can become obstacles when the White House wants agencies weaponized for political ends — a pattern that shaped how competition policy and platform regulation were staffed across the administration.
The trend: Trump's agency appointments pair establishment credentials with loyalists elsewhere — Simons at the FTC alongside Delrahim at DoJ — setting up recurring friction between independent antitrust enforcement and White House political priorities.