\n<\/p>\n
As the director of the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s consumer protection bureau, Chris Mufarrige is the top enforcer protecting Americans against predatory companies.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s got an uphill climb, consumer advocates say.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s push to defund and dismantle the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, carve-outs for Trump-friendly companies, pardons of white-collar criminals and the firing of FTC commissioners raise doubts about how effective his agency can be. And recent data about Donald Trump\u2019s stock trading and crypto windfalls undermine the anti-corruption push.<\/p>\n
Mufarrige told the Guardian that doubters should look at his agency\u2019s record, and expect more tough consumer-friendly moves this summer.<\/p>\n
Since taking the job in early 2025, he has pledged to expand oversight of finance companies and settled with Amazon, StubHub, Instacart, Shutterstock and others on deceptive subscriptions and pricing. An April FTC report spotlights the role Meta\u2019s Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram play in scams that cost consumers $2.5bn in 2025. This week, the FTC joined five states to force Deere & Co to allow farmers to repair tractors and other equipment, a push started by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Facebooks of the world, they have a responsibility here to deal with \u2026 clearcut fraud on their platforms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law in 1914, creating an agency with dual anti-trust and consumer-protection mandates to tackle \u201cunfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce\u201d.<\/p>\n
The FTC\u2019s five-member commission is down to just two Republican members, after Trump fired two Democrats in 2025, a move the supreme court backed. The agency has cut 287 employees overall since the end of 2024, according to government data.<\/p>\n
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity, from interviews conducted before Trump\u2019s latest financial disclosures.<\/p>\n
This administration has been criticized for siding with business over consumers, and the president and his family for business deals that benefit from his position. Does that impact how effective you can be at your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n It has not impacted my job one bit. I would put our last 15 to 16 months, our record, up against anybody\u2019s. We\u2019ve been extremely active with cases against LA Fitness, Live Nation, Ticketmaster, Uber, Amazon.<\/p>\n How does your approach contrast with your predecessors in the Biden administration?<\/strong><\/p>\n My predecessors viewed their role as \u2026 replacing consumer choice. They oftentimes either didn\u2019t like the product or the service that the consumer was purchasing or didn\u2019t like the way the industry worked, in terms of products and services being offered. I don\u2019t think that that\u2019s our role. Our role is to reinforce markets and ensure that consumers have meaningful choice.<\/p>\n Would you say companies have too much power right now in the United States?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that\u2019s why it\u2019s critical the FTC has both a competition and consumer protection authority. Competition is the first line of defense in consumer protection, insofar as competition \u2026 restricts the ability of companies from getting too powerful, whether it is business-to-business or business-to-the-consumer.<\/p>\n We want to make sure that in those instances where business has too much market power, competition law restricts that and \u2026 preserves some sort of equilibrium.<\/p>\n Do you think that the current laws are doing a good job protecting consumers?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think so. The area where Congress is active is privacy, obviously. And I think there\u2019s a lot of debate about what a national privacy statute should look like.<\/p>\n Section five allows us some flexibility in terms of targeting problematic conduct.<\/p>\n Can you explain how <\/strong>section <\/strong>five of 1914\u2019s Federal Trade Commission Act works?<\/strong><\/p>\n Very simply, section five is a statute that tells companies, broadly speaking, to treat consumers fairly.<\/p>\n Now, what that means is, obviously, the million-dollar question.<\/p>\n The way I think about section five, and I think case law bears it out, is that we are talking about business conduct that undermines consumer choice and consumer sovereignty.<\/p>\n If a consumer fully understands a product, understands its terms, understands its implications \u2026 but you and I don\u2019t like the terms, maybe it\u2019s a high interest rate, maybe it\u2019s an expensive product \u2013 that\u2019s not a consumer-protection problem.<\/p>\n A recent FTC report shows Meta companies led the proliferation of online scams that cost Americans $2.5bn in 2025. What happens next?<\/strong><\/p>\n I can\u2019t speak to non-public information, but online scams are a critical focus for us. We\u2019re seeing a significant amount of impersonation of other businesses online. Particularly when it comes to search engines.<\/p>\n The tech companies, the Facebooks of the world, they have a responsibility here to deal with that type of clearcut fraud on their platforms. We\u2019re actively thinking about ways to prevent that type of fraud from happening.<\/p>\n Their argument around misinformation and other \u2018free speech\u2019 issues has always been \u2018we\u2019re merely the platform<\/strong>\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n When it comes to advertising, which is what we\u2019re talking about here, the question for the social media companies and the search engines becomes: what is their role in the advertising that you\u2019re seeing?<\/p>\n This is not just simply a situation where you and I are on Facebook and you\u2019re telling me that I\u2019m ugly. This is a situation where a car dealership is putting an advertisement on the platform, and the platform\u2019s interacting with the dealer. So it\u2019s a different dynamic that we\u2019re talking about. And the consumer is suffering some sort of measurable harm.<\/p>\n What\u2019s next for privacy and data-protection regulation?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have an intense focus on kids in particular. We\u2019re actively focused on some of the major platforms where kids are participating online, kids and teenagers. I can\u2019t speak to non-public information, but that\u2019s really our investigative focus right now. We\u2019re also focused on age verification.<\/p>\n We\u2019re looking at in particular how AI is interacting with kids and teenagers. The plan is hopefully early next year to have something to go public with.<\/p>\n What kind of support do you have from the White House for this approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot. Obviously, the chairman is on the fraud taskforce [which Trump created in April], which I think speaks volumes.<\/p>\n How should we expect you and the FTC to interact with the fraud task<\/strong>force?<\/strong><\/p>\n You know, we\u2019re kind of doing our own thing like we always do. The fraud taskforce is more a DoJ thing. We might send things their way or vice versa.<\/p>\n How should US consumers view your office and bring you their problems?<\/strong><\/p>\n I want consumers to see us, as the chairman describes us frequently, as a cop on the beat.<\/p>\n We\u2019re here if there are law violations. We want to hear about them and we will investigate and we will take action real quick. Use reportfraud.FTC.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the director of the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s consumer protection bureau, Chris Mufarrige is the top enforcer protecting Americans against predatory companies. He\u2019s got an uphill climb, consumer advocates say. 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