CNBC Exclusive: Transcript: FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson Speaks with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Today

WHEN: Today, Thursday, March 13, 2025

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Thursday, March 13. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://global-deals.online/video/2025/03/13/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-ftc-chair-andrew-ferguson.html%3C/a%3E, https://global-deals.online/video/2025/03/13/ftc-chair-andrew-ferguson-big-tech-is-one-the-main-priorities-of-this-agency.html%3C/a%3E and https://global-deals.online/video/2025/03/13/ftc-chair-andrew-ferguson-my-job-is-to-protect-americans-from-monopoly-and-fraud.html%3C/a%3E.%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAll references must be sourced to CNBC.

EAMON JAVERS: I'm sitting here with the new FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson. Andrew, thanks so much for being here. Fascinating time to talk to you because so many headlines involving your agency right now. And we had this dramatic moment earlier in the week where you were at a CEO event, the Yale CEO conference, which was supposed to be off the record. I was in the room. You were talking to some of the biggest CEOs in the world, including Jamie Dimon and others. And then somebody recorded it and leaked some of the comments about your overall worldview on the FTC. I want to go to your overall world view on the FTC. But before we do that, I want to do a quick whip around of some of the big tech cases that you guys are facing because so much of what you're doing impacts the stock price of so many of these companies starting with Amazon. Yesterday, there was this fascinating moment where you guys filed in court and said, we need to delay our Amazon case because we don't have the resources. And then, like a couple of hours later, you filed another filing saying, no, actually, we were wrong. We're sorry. We do have the resources. Can you explain what happened there?

FTC CHAIR ANDREW FERGUSON: Sure. And thanks for having me.

JAVERS:  Yeah.

FERGUSON:  Didn't file anything, saying we didn't have the resources. Lawyer was talking during a hearing. The lawyer was wrong. The lawyer said he was wrong in the filing. I've said since day one, big tech is one of the main priorities of the Trump-Vance FTC. It's one of the reasons the president appointed me to this position. We will make, we, I've said since day one, every resource necessary to litigate these cases is available, will be made available. That remains true. That's why the lawyer filed what he did after he said what he did. He was wrong. We've got the resources. We've had them since day one. We're going to litigate these cases.

JAVERS:  So you're not backing off of Amazon?

FERGUSON:  Unequivocally, no.

JAVERS:  Microsoft. Yesterday, "Bloomberg" reported that you've opened an investigation into Microsoft. Can you tell us where that investigation stands right now?

FERGUSON:  Well, we're a law enforcement agency. So, you know, I'm not allowed to talk about stuff going on within the agency. But I can say President Trump appointed me to protect Americans in the marketplace. And that includes from big tech. And I've said since day one, big tech is one of our main priorities and that remains true.

JAVERS:  And the other big question is Facebook. You've got a case scheduled to go to trial in April, I believe, involving Facebook. And yesterday we saw Mark Zuckerberg at the White House. We don't know exactly what Mark Zuckerberg was talking to people at the White House about, but he is a fascinating figure because he's done this interesting political pitch toward MAGA and he has become friends with Elon Musk. He's become friendly with the president and the administration. If the administration came to you and said, hey, wait a second, you know, we kind of like Zuckerberg, now dial it back on Facebook, would you do that?

FERGUSON:  President Trump launched this suit against Meta in 2020. It's been litigated out for the last five years. I'm a law enforcer. My job is to make sure that everyone is complying with the antitrust laws. And if they aren't, we go to court. So the politics of all of this sort of above my pay grade, I see my job as pressing litigation where we have it, enforcing the antitrust laws across all the markets, taking big tech very seriously. And that's what we're going to do.

JAVERS:  So you don't see Facebook as off the hook here either?

FERGUSON:  We've got -- we've got a trial coming up. The team's getting ready. We're pressing toward that.

JAVERS:  Let me ask you about we had this sort of only in Washington drama about the secret recording at the CEO event earlier this week. You know, leaving the recording aside, I'm fascinated by your comments because I was in the room for that, and you sort of laid out your approach to the FTC and to antitrust and sort of big corporate power in that room. And I want to see if you can do that for our audience on live television because I think it's different than what a lot of folks on Wall Street have expected from a Trump FTC. After the election, there was a lot of talk that the Trump FTC would be, you know, open season for M&A, for big companies to do what they want. You don't see it quite that way. And I wonder if you could explain what the difference is between what Wall Street expected and what you're doing.

FERGUSON:  Sure. This is a free market administration, but one of the most important ways we keep our markets free in this country is vigorously enforcing the antitrust laws. If we've got markets infected with monopolies, with collusion, with foreclosure, the markets aren't free. They don't work for ordinary Americans. President Trump won this election because ordinary Americans were fed up with the way that the country was working. And I see it as my job at the FTC to vigorously enforce the antitrust laws to protect ordinary Americans. But I've talked with a lot of people in the business community and one of the biggest objections they had with the previous administration's antitrust regime was they never quite understood what was going on. There was a lot of unclarity. There was a lot of uncertainty. I see it as one of my jobs to provide regulatory certainty, regulatory clarity. And here's what I want to say about that -- if we've got a merger or conduct that violates the antitrust laws, and I think I can prove it in court, I'm going to take you to court. And if we don't, I'm going to get the hell out of the way. The FTC is not going to try to use sort of sub-regulatory means to hold up mergers without actually taking people to court and hope that they die on the vine. That's over. If we think it violates the laws, we're going to litigate. And if it doesn't, we're going to get out of the way and we're going to let markets do their thing. We want the economy to grow. We want it to be vibrant. We want it to be dynamic. We want it to be innovative. That's how we're going to get out of this debt crisis. The FTC can play a role in that by enforcing the antitrust laws. Make sure they work for everyone. But if you're not violating the law, the FTC is going to get out of the way.

JAVERS:  Andrew Ross Sorkin, back in the studios, got a question for you. So, let's—

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN:  Hey, Chair Ferguson, I just want to understand and maybe you can speak to it in terms of just the way the public is supposed to think about it. I think there's some folks in the business community who look at some of the decisions or things that are going on and look at them as political. I know it's not your jurisdiction. I think it's the FCC that's looking at the Paramount transaction, for example, and this "60 Minutes" piece and whether there should be a settlement or not. But how should people think about sort of these political elements, which historically I don't think were necessarily, though maybe you'd argue they are, they were, considered in the overall, you know, decision to pursue these transactions or not?

FERGUSON:  Yeah. President Trump appointed me to enforce the laws and to enforce them without fear or favor. My own view is the politics are all beside the point. My job is to protect Americans from monopoly and to protect Americans from fraud. And I don't care about the politics of the companies involved. I care about protecting ordinary Americans as consumers and as workers from fraud and from monopoly. And so that's what I'm going to do. Politics all aside, that's my job, is enforce the law, enforce them fairly and without regard to politics.

JOE KERNEN:  Is that a Lina Khan—

JAVERS:  Let me ask you this, do you see—

KERNEN:  Monopoly?

JAVERS:  Do you see consolidation?

KERNEN:  Or an actual monopoly?

JAVERS:  I'm sorry. Go ahead, Joe.

KERNEN:  Sorry, sorry Eamon. Is that a Lina Khan monopoly or an actual monopoly?

FERGUSON:  That said, monopoly is as the antitrust laws understand it. Look, my, I have no ideological predisposition against merger and acquisition activity. It's part of how the economy grows. But I do have a strong ideological preference for vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws. I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel and allow monopolies to, you know, raise everyone's prices, deprive us of innovation to make our economy less dynamic. But look, I see it as my job to enforce the laws and win in court. And if I can't win in court, the FTC needs to get out of the way and let business innovate for all Americans.

JAVERS:  And what you said in that room with CEOs earlier this week was so fascinating to me, because if I'm understanding it correctly, you see consolidation of large corporate power as potentially threatening to sort of Americans' liberty in a sense of, you know, big corporations can have a social agenda that you don't agree with on whether that's vaccines or masks or Black Lives Matters issues. That's something that you see as potentially threatening to Americans. Can you explain that?

FERGUSON:  Yeah. Look, go back to 2020. You know, if you had a view on masks that was inconsistent with how big tech felt about masks, you weren't allowed to talk about it. If you had a view on vaccines, couldn't talk about it. If you thought that changing election laws in the middle of an election was unfair, you weren't allowed to talk about it. But it wasn't just big tech censorship. That was a huge problem. Consumers couldn't go into a store without having political messages pushed in their face. And I'm sitting in 2020 working in the Senate going, gosh, if companies feel like they can alienate half of their consumer base without suffering any real competitive consequences, we probably have a competition problem. But that's what I care about is competition. It's not the political messaging itself. That's not my job. My job is to protect Americans from the abuse of market power. And if market power makes it possible for companies to censor or to push a social agenda that is really alienating to Americans, I care about the market power, not the message. That's my job as an antitrust enforcer is to protect Americans from the abuse of market power.

JAVERS:  Becky wants to jump in here, too.

BECKY QUICK:  Yeah. Chair Ferguson, thank you for being with us. I think that clarifies things in a way that I hadn't heard before. And I think that may be where people are coming down on it. Do you look at it? If you see, let's say woke mentality being put out there, you think of that, there must be a monopoly there because how else would they be able to alienate 50 percent of their of their population that, that that is very different than what we've seen before. So if a media company or industry is seen as leaning one way or another, if a technology company or industry is seen as leaning one way or another, you think that that is indicative of a monopoly.

FERGUSON:  Nope. I'm not going to treat the politics of any particular company as indicative of monopoly. But what I do care about is if companies are degrading their product quality by kicking people off because they hold particular views, that could be an indication that there's a competition problem. And that's what I care about. But it is absolutely not the FTC's job to run around checking the politics of businesses and using that as a proxy for a monopoly. But if companies are degrading their product quality, actively trying to drive away consumers because they aren't suffering competitive consequences, it could be an indication that there are competition problems. And competition problems are my job. But I'm not walking around checking the liens of particular businesses. That's adamantly not my job.

JAVERS:  I'm curious about your, the difference between you and Lina Khan, right? I mean, Lina Khan was kind of a figure of fear on Wall Street and in corporate America. And, you know, you come in and people are expecting an entire sea change here. I'm wondering just how many of the enforcement actions from the Lina Khan era FTC you guys are going to drop or move away from?

FERGUSON:  Yeah. You know, I wrote hundreds of pages of dissents when I was a Republican commissioner under Lina. And we have big differences. And I think the two main differences are I want to either go to court or get out of the way. A lot of business people have told me that one of the problems they had with the previous FTC was that a merger would go into the agency, and it would kind of disappear, and it could languish there for months, and they would get the sense that the FTC's goal was to hope that the markets change, the deal would become unprofitable and the deal would be withdrawn. I want nothing to do with that. We're going to scrutinize deals the way that Congress told us to scrutinize deals, and if they're illegal, and I think I can win in court or in a court. And if they're not, the FTC is going to get out of the way and let business do its thing. And the second thing is, the FTC had a really heavy emphasis under the Biden administration on ex-anti regulation. We passed dozens of rules over the last four years, and I voted against the overwhelming majority of them, wrote page after page of dissents on them. I don't see it as the FTC's job to be a regulator. I'm a cop on the beat. I check our markets to make sure there's no fraud, there's no monopolization, there's no collusion. If there is, I act, and if there isn't, I stay out of the way. And, you know, the president has emphasized his deregulatory agenda. That's absolutely going to be one of the priorities of the FTC is carefully going through all of our regulations. And the ones that are, you know, imposing onerous requirements on businesses and not protecting Americans, we're going to confront them and get them out of the way. And ones that were illegal when they were originally adopted, we're going to take care of those too.

JAVERS:  So you're not dropping any of the Lina Khan era enforcement actions?

FERGUSON:  Well, it's a 2-2 commission right now, so if I wanted to, it's very difficult. But I objected to a lot of enforcement actions, particularly at the end. There were a couple that my objections were quite vehement about. We're taking a very close look at every enforcement action that we currently have pending, making sure that they're consistent with the law and that they're actually going to protect Americans.

JAVERS:  Can you explain your relationship to this White House? I mean, do you view it as your job to take direction from the White House? I mean, a lot of people have said President Trump is a transactional president. He's going to be in there doing -- doing deals. Do you feel that they should be sending a signal to you about which ones they want you to push on, and which ones they want you to drop?

FERGUSON:  Look, President Trump is the president of the United States, and he is my boss. But he appointed me to this position to run it consistently with the principles of the free market system, while also protecting American consumers and laborers from competition problems and from fraud. And I see it as my job to carry out the president's agenda consistent with the law. And so, direction from the White House -- you know, I do work for the president. The agency is part of the executive branch. He's the head of the executive branch. But he put me here to run the agency and to follow the law. And that's what I'm going to do.

JAVERS:  Do you feel like Wall Street and corporate America generally understands the distinction that you're making between this FTC and, say, the George W. Bush FTC, or the FTC of the '90s?

FERGUSON:  I think the distinction I want to draw is we're not going to be deferential to decisions made in C-suites. I see it as my job to take the antitrust laws very seriously, and to have at the front of my mind, protecting ordinary Americans as consumers and as workers. And that's what I go to work every day to do. And we are going to be willing to take any business to court if we think we can win in court, and they're violating the antitrust laws. But equally, we want certainty and regulatory consistency for the marketplaces. If we can't take you to court, we are going to get out of the way, and we're going to let business innovate for this country.

JAVERS:  Can you give us a sense of sort of sector by sector, how you view this? You've talked a lot about big tech and we sort of get that. What about other sectors? You know, there's PBMs, for example, in the medical space. There's refineries in the oil and gas space. Do you have thoughts on sector by sector?

FERGUSON:  I think that the FTC is going to prioritize its resources in the markets that affect ordinary Americans most in their daily lives. So big tech, all of us interact with big tech every day. That's going to be an emphasis at the FTC. The health care markets -- these are some of the most important markets. All of us have to use it all the time. We're an aging population. We're using the health care markets more. I would say those two markets are the chief emphasis of the FTC, because those are markets that affect ordinary Americans every day. But the other thing I'm going to take a close look at is competition and fraud and other consumer protection problems that affect Americans as workers. I launched the commission's first ever labor markets task force. The antitrust laws protect people who are selling their labor just as much as it protects people who are buying things. That's going to be a heavy emphasis. I want to protect Americans who are just trying to make a living and put food on the table, and I'm going to use our resources to protect Americans as workers.

JAVERS:  Fascinating conversation. Andrew Ferguson, thank you so much for being here this morning. Really appreciate it.

FERGUSON:  Thank you for having me.