The FTC has long used policy statements, public workshops, reports, and warning letters to influence the marketplace and communicate its thinking about key issues and aspects of its mission. Examples from my tenure at the FTC include workshops and reports on big data, data brokers, mobile payments, and the internet of things; policy statements on deceptively formatting advertisements and homeopathic drug claims; and warning letters to a range companies making health claims (see here, here, and here, for instance).
The current FTC has embraced this strategy with gusto, issuing multiple statements, reports, and letters announcing new policies and priorities, as well as law enforcement “crackdowns” it has launched or is planning. While some of these statements come from the Commission and others come from staff, the effect is largely the same – companies subject to the FTC’s jurisdiction pay attention (or should).
It’s worth pausing for a moment to recall some of the more prominent of these statements since Lina Khan became Chair. (I focus here on the FTC’s consumer protection mission, though there are plenty of examples in antitrust too.) Consider these:
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...