FTC Chair Khan on the Enforcement Policy Regarding Unfair Methods of Competition
When Congress passed the FTC Act in 1914, it didn’t just create a new agency. It created new law for that agency to enforce. Section 5 of the Act provides that “unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce” are “hereby declared unlawful.”1 The next clause states, “The Commission is hereby empowered and directed to prevent” businesses “from using unfair methods of competition.”2
Together these sentences form the heart of the Commission’s legislative mandate in the domain of competition.3, 4 Accordingly, over the last century the Commission used its Section 5 authority to challenge a host of unlawful business practices.