Former Federal Trade Commission member Alvaro Bedoya told the New Republic that he encountered extensive finagling of government systems and the free market before President Donald Trump fired him this year. Bedoya, who was confirmed as an FTC member in 2022, says he remains “worried about the money at the top crushing everyone underneath.” “That sounds grim because it is,” said Bedoya, who spent considerable time fighting to reverse the damage of corporate opportunists tweaking the U.S. health system to their advantage. He’d worked with an independent pharmacy owner in Appalachia complaining of insurance companies using intermediaries to steer lucrative prescriptions to their own mail-order pharmacies rather than local businesses. One insurance company had even tried to turn away a West Virginia family from a local pharmacy and force them to wait weeks for their own supplier to mail them life-saving medicine for their cancer-afflicted child. Corporate middlemen could blow up any agreement at their whim by claiming pharmacists were at default for bogus noncompliance. Bedoya also did battle with corporations who had bought up every vendor for feed, fertilizer, pesticides and then began jacking up prices for local farmers amid the resulting monopoly. “The companies weren’t focused on research and development,” farmers told Bedoya. “They’re using their wealth to buy their competitors.” Meat processors had been scuttled down by buyouts to only one processor — who could then pay farmers however little he wanted to buy their cattle. Farmers who used to be able to repair their own tractors now discovered that John Deere had locked down their vehicles software, forcing farmers to take broken tractors to a company dealership. “It’s like getting picked apart by a chicken,” one farmer complained to him. During his career Bedoya also helped day laborers whose millionaire employers insisted they work as independent contractors with no benefits, and sometimes with no worksite amenities like drinkable water. When Trump arrived, he designated as FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson, who announced the FTC would “usher in a new Golden Age for American businesses, workers, and consumers.” “What has followed has been a Golden Age for the C-suite,” said Bedoya. The FTC suddenly determined that a ban on noncompete clauses that lock people into dead-end positions were not worth defending in court. Another rule banning companies insisting you unsubscribe from a service over the phone was delayed. And an order barring an oil executive from the board of Exxon was dismantled. Trump’s revamped Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also suddenly didn’t care to fine banks that hit veterans with surprise overdraft fees. “A lawsuit against a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary that allegedly tricked people into taking out loans for mobile homes when they had $57.78 in discretionary income? Gone, said Bedoya. All of this feeds an American misery that can breed new misery, said Bedoya. “Many liberals remain baffled that America elected Donald Trump. They genuinely have no idea how he could have won the election. I don’t think that Trump won because of ‘wokeism’ or the ‘trans agenda,’ whatever that is,” Bedoya said. “I think he won by speaking to that despair and telling people that he alone could fix it.” But those soothing words were just an open door, apparently. Read the full New Republic report at this link.

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