It’s easy to understand why the US Chamber of Commerce is so upset about the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to ban noncompete agreements. The problem for businesses is not that they will lose trade secrets or valuable investments in workers to competitors. It’s that they just lost bargaining power to workers — and that’s exactly what the FTC intended.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest business lobby, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to strike down a federal agency's near-total ban on employers requiring workers to sign agreements not to join rivals or launch competing businesses.

The Chamber's lawsuit in federal court in Tyler, Texas, alleges that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission lacks the power to adopt sweeping rules such as the ban on so-called noncompete agreements released on Tuesday, which is set to take effect in August.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned employers from limiting their workers’ abilities to work for rivals, a sweeping change that the agency says could help raise wages and increase competition among businesses.

The move bars contracts known as noncompetes, which prevent workers from leaving for a competitor for a certain amount of time, in most circumstances. The agency has said the proposal would raise wages by forcing companies to compete harder for talent.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday banned employers from using noncompete contracts to prevent most workers from joining rival firms, achieving a policy goal that is popular with labor but faces an imminent court challenge from business groups.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday approved a regulation that would ban noncompete agreements nationwide on the grounds that they unfairly limit workers' mobility and lead to lower pay.

The FTC, which currently has a Democratic majority under President Joe Biden, voted 3-2 to approve the final noncompete rule. The agency first proposed the ban on noncompete agreements in January 2023, arguing they unfairly limit competition. 

Comedian Jon Stewart said Apple asked him not to interview Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on a podcast while he was hosting his Apple TV+ show “The Problem With Jon Stewart.”

His TV show ran for two seasons before ending abruptly in October.

“I gotta tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it, to have you,” Stewart told Khan during an episode of “The Daily Show” Monday. “They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her.’”

President Joe Biden on Tuesday will launch a new task force to take on “unfair and illegal” corporate pricing, which Biden sees as a major reason why consumers are not yet feeling the impact of cooling inflation rates and a strong economy.

The task force will be jointly led by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, two agencies at the forefront of the Biden administration’s aggressive regulatory agenda over the past three years.

Unethical funeral homes have exploited grieving customers for decades. What consumers don’t know is that many of the industry’s bad actors have been hidden from the public thanks to a sweetheart deal struck between the Federal Trade Commission and the funeral industry more than 25 years ago.

The Federal Trade Commission opened a broad new investigation of competition in the nascent AI industry by issuing orders to five key companies that they provide it with private information about their investment deals.

Why it matters: The inquiry, aimed at Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic, could lead to action by the regulator, which under chair Lina Khan has sought to pursue anti-monopoly measures in emerging tech markets.

Kirk Vartan, owner of the Bay Area pizza shop A Slice of New York, sat in the break room of a wholesale warehouse and started venting about how hard it is for him to buy 7-Up.

He can only stock a few cans at a time, he said, while grocery stores nearby have pallets of newly delivered soda. “It’s like, ‘what the hell guys, you just told me you don’t have it.’ I go down the street and it’s on sale,” he said.

Sitting about eight feet away, intently listening and taking copious notes in a small black book, was Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission.