Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an independent federal regulatory agency.Created in 1914, the FTC was part of an antitrust settlement that included the Clayton Antitrust Act and congressional acceptance of a judicial “rule of reason,” which tolerated aspects of business concentration. Consisting of five appointed commissioners, the agency inherited the investigatory powers of an earlier Bureau of Corporations and became the administrator of regulatory legislation outlawing “unfair methods of competition”. Subsequently, it also became the administrator of laws under which it supervised export associations and enforced restraints on price discrimination, deceptive
advertising, proposed mergers, and certain labelling, lending, packaging, and warranty practices.
The FTC's creation was supported both by antimonopolists seeking to halt the “unfair competition” involved in trust‐building and by businessmen seeking “fairness” as a basis for greater order and stability. Differing definitions of “fairness” could serve differing ends, however, and in practice the FTC pursued contradictory policies. At times it fought industrial concentration, most notably in its investigations of the electrical power, iron and steel, and cement industries in the 1930s and in its actions against “shared monopoly” in the 1970s. But at other times, especially under chairs William E. Humphrey (1925–1933), Edward F. Howry (1953–1955), and James C. Miller (1981–1985), it sponsored corporate collaboration and business stabilization schemes. In addition, its rulings tended to be more concerned with protecting complaining competitors than with encouraging competitive markets, especially in its enforcement of the Robinson‐Patman Anti‐Price Discrimination Act, which from 1945 to 1965 generated nearly 70 percent of the FTC's regulatory orders.
Historians generally regard the FTC as one of the least successful of America's regulatory commissions. It showed political staying power and conducted investigations of lasting importance for industrial policy. But it was more often characterized by contradictory impulses, unstable policies and standards, persisting organizational problems, and the squandering of its resources on relatively inconsequential matters.
See also
Antitrust Legislation;
Electrical Industry;
Federal Regulatory Agencies;
Iron and Steel Industry;
Progressive Era.
Bibliography
Alan Stone , Economic Regulation and the Public Interest: The Federal Trade Commission in Theory and Practice, 1977.
Robert A. Katzmann , Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Policy, 1980.
Ellis W. Hawley