With Defeat of Megamerger, Sanders Thanks Khan for Taking On 'Corporate Greed'

Praise for Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan continued to pour in on Wednesday after a pair of judges blocked the merger of grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons following challenges by the FTC and state attorneys general.

"The proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger would have led to higher prices at the grocery store and harmed workers," said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Let me thank FTC Chair Lina Khan for successfully fighting this merger and standing up to corporate greed."

Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) also welcomed the rulings and sent "a big thank you to Lina Khan and her team at the FTC."

Their comments on Wednesday followed similar applause from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal as well as groups including the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) and Groundwork Collaborative.

Khan addressed the win during a Tuesday stream with political commentator Hasan Piker, noting that "this is the first time that the FTC has ever sought to block a merger not just because it's gonna be bad for consumers, but also because it's gonna be bad for workers."

Khan, an appointee of outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden, has won praise from progressives for taking on not only grocery giants and other companies trying to build monopolies but also Big Pharma and Big Tech.

Sanders recently called her "the best FTC chair in modern history" and AELP earlier this year published a document detailing how, under Khan's leadership, the agency "has entered a new era of more effective, modern, and democratic enforcement to better protect consumers, workers, and independent businesses."

Examples included in the AELP roundup include Khan's "crackdown on deceptive 'junk fees,'" a ban on noncompete clauses that's being challenged in court, a historic lawsuit against Amazon.com, and a "click-to-cancel" rule that requires sellers to "make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up."

However, the new era of the FTC is set to soon come to an end. Since President-elect Donald Trump's victory last month, speculation has been building that he would replace Khan with someone who would do the bidding of big business. Amid celebrations of the rulings against the Kroger-Albertsons merger on Tuesday, the Republican announced Andrew Ferguson as his pick for chair.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Wednesday, Basel Musharbash, principal attorney at Antimonopoly Counsel, said that elevating Ferguson, who already sits on the FTC, to chair, "is an affront to the antitrust laws and a gift to the oligarchs and monopolies bleeding this country dry."

Although the agency is expected to be friendlier to mergers under the next Trump administration, Albertsons responded to the Tuesday rulings by bailing on the $24.6 billion deal and suing Kroger for billions of dollars on Wednesday, rather than appealing or moving to in-house FTC hearings.

That move could reflect industry fears of U.S. courts that are willing to block major mergers, as The American Prospect executive editor David Dayen pointed out after the federal court decision on Tuesday.

"The important thing here is not that Biden's enforcers blocked a merger... it's that courts are increasingly comfortable with merger enforcement," he said. "States can sue under the Sherman Act, and they will. The real change to track is in the judiciary. Wall Street, take note."