US President-elect Donald Trump has selected Mark Meador, a former staffer to Utah Senator Mike Lee, to be a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, the agency responsible for competition and consumer protection enforcement.
Meador is a veteran of both the FTC and the Justice Department’s antitrust division, and spent three years advising Lee, the ranking Republican on the Senate antitrust subcommittee, before starting a law firm with a former colleague of the department’s outgoing antitrust head, Jonathan Kanter. Meador also worked with Kanter at the Paul Weiss law firm.
Meador was in the running to be a minority party member on the FTC under President Joe Biden.
Meador is seen as a pro-enforcement, populist Republican, particularly when it comes to the technology industry. He drafted a bill for Lee that would have forced the breakup of Google’s ad tech business, an issue currently being litigated in a DOJ antitrust case.
Early in his career Meador spent about five years working on antitrust cases at the FTC. He later served at the Justice Department’s antitrust division for more than two years before moving to Lee’s office.
In private practice, Meador has advocated for clients with issues against larger competitors, including work for conservative social media platforms like Rumble.
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Earlier Tuesday, Trump selected Andrew Ferguson, a Republican member of the FTC, to serve as the agency’s chair, a politically charged role currently held by Lina Khan.
