Latest FTC Vendetta Targets a Good Night's Sleep

Monday’s stock market news was horrifying — a loss in investor confidence spurred by the shocking reality that Kamala Harris might actually become president. This is after three years of the Democrats’ failed economic policies, their out-of-control inflation, and their deliberate sabotage on our domestic energy production.

And as though this isn’t enough, American business must deal with attack after attack by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency which — under the misguided leadership of Chair Lina Khan — has been on a rampage against our economy.

Khan is an ideologue with a track record of regulatory overreach, who uses frivolous litigation to achieve political ends. She became a darling of so-called progressives as a law student for her article insisting the government must deploy excessive antitrust force against Amazon.

She sees it as her mission to punish big companies for the crime of being big, attacking industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to virtual reality like a rabid dog without a leash.

Her target of the day? Mattresses.

In July 2024, FTC authorities voted unanimously to block Tempur Sealy International, Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Mattress Firm Group Inc. with the goal of improving the company’s retail presence and help the customer experience. The market has a large number of players and is not highly consolidated: the bedding market size is $79 billion, and the proposed acquisition was just $4 billion.

However, this was enough for the current FTC to put the merger in its sights — targeting it as a so-called “Mattress Monopoly.” This is (yet) another instance of Khan’s blatant dismissal of both economic realities and the actual good of the consumer.

Under her, the FTC has moved away from the “consumer welfare standard” — that is evaluating deals based on their presumed impact to consumers — to a “big is bad” standard.

The Tempur/MFG union would have been classified as a vertical merger, the joining of companies that provide different products/services along a similar value chain to increase efficiencies. In vertical mergers, the blended companies share knowledge and reduce costs that can then be passed on to the consumer.

Now, for the past four decades, the FTC has traditionally not challenged vertical mergers, as they have tended to add value to consumers rather than harm them. A prescient example of this is when Amazon acquired Whole Foods, who now together provide consumers digital shopping conveniences and lower prices.

But Biden’s FTC argues that this could give Tempur Sealy the power to raise prices and suppress competition. Last December, the Biden administration opened the door to this kind of economic persecution with updated merger guidelines that drastically lowered the standard to investigate mergers.

So more deals now meet the threshold of potentially “anticompetitive,” creating yet more regulatory expense and burden for American companies.

As long as they have been able to, Biden’s FTC has been attacking mergers. In March 2021, the FTC sued to block the Illumina-Grail acquisition — the first vertical block in decades — because it would “stifle competition and innovation in the U.S. market.”

This move was objectively crazy.

Illumina intended to acquire Grail, the company with a mission to detect cancer early and make early-stage, multi-cancer testing more accessible and affordable to patients. Given that the tech revolutions of the 21^st Century are expected to be in biotech, the government should be doing everything to help this industry not hurt it.

Blocking this wasn’t just bad for business, it will cost patients’ lives in their battle with cancer.

The Democrats’ recklessness could also cost America its economic battle with China. American mattress companies must compete to survive against cheap imports from China.

The wholesale value of mattresses sold in the U.S. in 2023 was $9.8 billion, down 6.8% from the previous year. Serta Simmons had to slash its factory workforce by half since 2018, as cheaper imports have exacerbated its struggles in a slumping market.

Chinese slave labor is very difficult to compete against in the open market, even more difficult when Democrats are in the ring helping China win.

The FTC’s war on American businesses by frustrating the industry instead of helping innovation. It’s proven bad for mattresses, cancer detection, pharmaceuticals, and on and on.

Let’s hope that come Election Day, we can collectively wake up from this nightmare.

Jared Whitley is a longtime politico who has worked in the U.S. Congress, White House and defense industry. He is an award-winning writer, having won best blogger in the state from the Utah Society of Professional Journalists (2018) and best columnist from Best of the West (2016). He earned his MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai. Read Jared Whitley's reports — More Here.