By Andy Jung, Associate Counsel with TechFreedom.

In August 2022, the Federal Trade Commission published its Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022 to 2026. At a glance, the plan appeared innocuous—but a closer read revealed an astonishing and misguided change to the FTC’s longstanding, bipartisan mission statement.

Now, under new leadership, the FTC has an opportunity to correct course and reinstate the mission the agency followed for twenty-five years. But will the new leadership pick this low-hanging fruit?

From 1997-2022, the FTC defined its mission as: “Protecting consumers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices through law enforcement, advocacy, and education without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.”

The FTC first formally articulated its mission in compliance with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), which requires agencies to submit “strategic plans” containing “a comprehensive mission statement covering the major functions and operations of the agency.” These strategic plans cover five-year periods, and agencies must update them every three years.

The 1997-2002 Strategic Plan defined the FTC’s mission, including the “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” clause. The Commission adhered to the spirit of this mission for twenty-five years.

That all changed in 2022 during the Biden administration. In the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, written under the leadership of Lina Khan, the FTC struck “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” from its mission. The FTC made the change without so much as a footnote highlighting the deletion—and despite opposition from the public.

The 2022-2026 Strategic Plan was an outlier: removing “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” broke with over two decades of bipartisan tradition. The revision raised the question: Did the FTC now intend to burden legitimate business activity?

The answer appears to be: yes. Six months after changing the mission statement, the FTC initiated a rulemaking on so-called “commercial surveillance,” defined as “the business of collecting, analyzing, and profiting from information about people.” While aspects of data collection and online advertising are unpopular, the rulemaking sweeps in business conduct, like personalized advertising, that is both legal and beneficial to businesses and consumers alike—in other words, legitimate business activity.

Two years later, the FTC changed its premerger notification form and premerger notification rules, expanding the requirements for firms seeking approval to merge. The changes “increase[d] the cost and burden of its regulatory processes, which might prevent many even benign and procompetitive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from getting out of corporate boardrooms.” The FTC itself estimated the change would increase time spent on merger filings by “an average of 107 additional hours.”

Under Chair Khan’s leadership, the FTC also sought to hold AI developers liable for malicious actors misusing their tools in contravention of Section 230. The FTC eventually abandoned the so-called “means and instrumentalities” provision; two years later, however, the FTC approved a consent order against Rytr for allegedly selling “an AI ‘Testimonial & Review’ service that provided subscribers with the means of generating false and deceptive online reviews.” Republican Commissioners Ferguson and Holyoak dissented, citing the impact on legitimate AI businesses: “Treating as categorically illegal a generative AI tool merely because of the possibility that someone might use it for fraud is inconsistent with our precedents and common sense. And it threatens to turn honest innovators into lawbreakers and risks strangling a potentially revolutionary technology in its cradle.”

The composition of the FTC has changed significantly since the Biden administration. Republican Andrew Ferguson is now chair, joined by Republican Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Mark Meador.

But it remains unclear whether those Commissioners are interested in reinstating the FTC’s original mission statement. Earlier this year, the FTC updated the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan “to remove DEI goals and language.” The FTC, however, retained the neutered Khan-era mission statement.

Neutering the mission was part of former Chair Khan’s strategy of “streamlin[ing] internal processes…[a]nd eliminating self-imposed red tape” to allow the FTC to quickly and easily implement its policy agenda. Current leadership may retain the Khan-era mission to allow itself wiggle-room to pursue the administration’s agenda.

For example, in February 2025, with Republicans now at the helm, the FTC issued a Request for Information on “Technology Platform Censorship.” The goal of the inquiry appears to be to jawbone online platforms into changing their content moderation practices—despite the recent Supreme Court ruling that content moderation is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. The FTC’s motive seems to be “to change the speech that will be displayed” on social media.

There are, however, some positive signs. In April, the FTC launched a public inquiry to identify and reduce anti-competitive regulations, seeking “to identify unnecessary regulations that exclude new market entrants, protect dominant incumbents, and predetermine economic winners and losers.” Eliminating anti-competitive regulations aligns with the FTC’s original mission of avoiding undue burdens on legitimate businesses.

Now, the FTC has an opportunity to reestablish its mission statement and redeem its free market bonafides. Soon, under GPRA, the FTC must release for comment a draft of its 2026-2030 Strategic Plan. The new strategic plan would be the perfect place to reinstate the FTC’s original mission.

Hopefully, bipartisan tradition and sound policy win out over anti-business, populist animus. In the new Strategic Plan, the FTC should reinstate its longstanding mission statement, including—especially!—the “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” clause. New leadership can return to a balanced regulatory approach which facilitates, not burdens, procompetitive conduct.