The 'One Agency Act' Moves All Antitrust Enforcement from FTC to DOJ: What It Means for Competition

The “One Agency Act” is a major overhaul of how the U.S. government polices monopolies and market competition. The core of this bill is simple: it takes all federal antitrust enforcement functions away from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and hands them exclusively to the Department of Justice (DOJ). According to Section 2, the goal is to stop wasting taxpayer money on two agencies doing the same job and create a single, more aggressive enforcement body.

The Great Antitrust Consolidation

Starting on the effective date—which hits at the beginning of the first full fiscal year after the bill is signed, following a 90-day wait—the FTC’s antitrust role is essentially wiped out. Section 4 mandates that all FTC antitrust staff, funding, and ongoing investigations must transfer to the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. Think of it like a corporate merger, but with government agencies: the DOJ is the buyer, and the FTC’s Bureau of Competition is the division being absorbed. The Attorney General now gets to decide how to run the show, including reorganizing the division for “efficient” enforcement.

This transfer isn’t just about the people; it’s about the power. If you’re a company considering a major merger, Section 5 makes it clear: you’ll now file your premerger notification papers exclusively with the Attorney General, not the FTC. Furthermore, the Attorney General assumes control over all existing FTC consent decrees related to antitrust. This means one person now holds the keys to all past, present, and future federal antitrust enforcement, a significant concentration of power previously split between two independent bodies.

What Happens to the FTC?

For the FTC, this is a major jurisdictional haircut. The agency is explicitly barred from starting any new antitrust investigations or enforcement actions under the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, or even its own Section 5 (unfair methods of competition), unless specifically approved by the Attorney General (Section 5). For FTC employees working in the antitrust units, they become DOJ employees. Section 4 requires the Attorney General to take over all FTC antitrust employees and assign them to the DOJ Antitrust Division by the end of the transition period, which can last up to 18 months.

This move has practical implications for business regulation. For example, Section 6 requires sweeping “technical and conforming amendments” across dozens of laws, including the Clayton Act and the FTC Act itself, removing every mention of the FTC’s authority in antitrust matters and replacing it with the Attorney General. If you’re a lawyer or compliance officer, you’re now dealing with one set of standards and one agency, which is the intended benefit of streamlining. However, it also means the institutional knowledge and perspective of the FTC, which often focused on consumer harm, are now subsumed under the DOJ’s priorities, which tend to focus more on market structure.

The Real-World Impact of Centralized Power

The stated benefit is clear: a single, focused agency should be more efficient and less confusing for everyone involved. No more “turf wars” between the DOJ and FTC over who investigates which potential monopoly. Taxpayers, in theory, save money by eliminating duplicate administrative overhead.

But there’s a flip side to this concentration of power. Antitrust enforcement is highly complex and often politically charged. Giving the Attorney General (a political appointee) exclusive control over all federal antitrust policy removes the existing check and balance provided by the independent, bipartisan FTC. This could mean that enforcement priorities shift dramatically with every change in presidential administration, potentially leading to less consistent regulation for businesses. For consumers, the risk is that eliminating the dual-agency approach removes the benefit of having two different perspectives—one focused on competition (DOJ) and one often focused on consumer protection (FTC)—weighing in on complex market issues. The bill centralizes massive regulatory authority, and how that authority is used will depend entirely on the priorities of the sitting Attorney General.