Outgoing U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan said Tuesday that she hopes her successor in the incoming Trump administration will not cut a “sweetheart” deal with Amazon (AMZN-2.48%) and Facebook’s parent company Meta (META-2.28%), as the agency continues its antitrust cases against the tech giants.
With only eight business days remaining in her tenure, Khan appeared on CNBC Tuesday morning, where she was asked about recent efforts by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to win favor with President-elect Donald Trump.
“It is true that the FTC has been very successful, including in its ongoing litigations against Amazon and Facebook. And so it’s only going to be natural that those companies are going to want to come in and see [if] can they get some type of sweetheart deal,” Khan told CNBC. “Can they get some type of settlement that’s cheap, that settles for pennies on the dollar and lets them escape from a liability finding in court.”
Amazon and Facebook are both facing FTC lawsuits accusing them of engaging in anticompetitive practices to maintain monopoly power in their respective sectors.
Khan said she hopes lenient deals won’t be made, but that she can’t predict what the new chair will do.
Her comments come after Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg both visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The billionaires declined to endorse a candidate during the election, but their companies have since made big donations to the president-elect’s inauguration fund.
Meta recently added Trump-ally Dana White to its board and today announced plans to replace its third-party fact-checking program with the community-driven system popularized by Elon Musk’s X. Moves that continue to signal a warmer approach to President-elect Donald Trump.
For its part, Amazon is reportedly paying $40 million to license a documentary on incoming first lady Melania Trump.
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