Last week, the new Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson created a task force that, among other things, lists “harmful occupational licensing requirements” among its list of top concerns.
All indications suggest that the FTC under President Trump is likely to be just as activist as the Biden FTC in equally bad ways but against different targets (like social media companies). The envisioned task force is largely aimed at a number of private-sector business practices—like non-compete agreements, for instance—that may not really be a problem or, if so, may not require a government-forced remedy.
Despite the fever dreams of occupational licensing geeks like me, it was probably just a coincidence that this task force was announced a day after the tenth anniversary of the SCOTUS decision in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners vs FTC that slapped the state licensing board for basically acting as enforcers for the dental industry cartel of incumbent practitioners when they declared war on non-dentist teeth-whitening businesses. (For more about that decision and what liberty-minded policy reformers can take away from it, have a listen to our recent webinar or a look at this blogpost.)
If the task force is looking for inspiration, they could do far worse than look to that decision, particularly as it showcases one useful thing the FTC has done to push back on actual anti-competitive practices that harm American workers and consumers.
Licensing reform, to be sure, fundamentally requires state-based reforms because they are state-based laws. But if the enforcement mechanism of those laws violates federal statutes—via quasi-governmental licensing boards that strive to protect their turf, not consumers—there is at least some defensible claim for the federal government to get involved. The renewed scrutiny might even spur state legislators to make long-overdue reductions to licensing barriers, a leashing of anticompetitive boards, or (hopefully) both.
