Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

30. Federal Trade Commission · Minor

Expand the consumer welfare standard beyond price alone

Not started

872 30. Federal Trade Commission

“Of course, the consumer welfare standard must guide FTC action, but, in appropriate situations and with strong evidence, this standard must be expanded to include more factors than just price.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Commission issued no statement expanding or restating the consumer welfare standard. Its one framework decision in the window was to leave the framework alone: on 2025-02-18 Chairman Ferguson told staff that the FTC's and DOJ's joint 2023 Merger Guidelines are in effect and are the framework for merger review, on the express ground that "we should prize stability and disfavor wholesale rescission". Those Guidelines already weigh non-price effects, but they were issued in December 2023 and nothing in the window widened the standard the Mandate names.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Leveled with #2236, the other half of the same passage: both ask for a change to the standard of proof the Commission applies, and the only in-window act on either is the decision to keep the 2023 Merger Guidelines unchanged. Retention is not expansion — “progress is measured on this ask” (§3b).
  • The memo PDF (https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/ferguson-memo-re-merger-guidelines.pdf) was read with pdftotext -layout; the landing page carries the 2025-02-18 date and is the stable Evidence URL. ftc.gov press releases carry a datePublished of 2026-02-13 on every page — a site-migration artefact — so dates must be taken from the news listing, not the page.
  • ftc.gov press-release search for consumer welfare returns nothing in the window.
Action
expand
Object
consumer welfare standard
ID
2235