FTC’s FY 2026-2030 Strategic Plan: Strong Enforcement Signals Despite Business-Friendly Tone

By Jason Powers, Adam Hudes, Nicole Castle, Reese Poncia, and Stephen Creighton*

Overview

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) recently issued its FY 2026–2030 Strategic Plan (the “Plan”), which sets forth three primary goals: (1) protecting Americans¹ from unfair or deceptive acts or practices; (2) combatting unfair methods of competition, preventing illegal monopolies, and promoting competition; and (3) maximizing agency mission outcomes through operational excellence and efficiency. The Plan reflects a more business-friendly posture, restoring the mission qualifier that enforcement should proceed “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.”²

The Plan does not indicate an intent to retreat from enforcement. Rather, it points to targeted scrutiny and enforcement in areas the agency views as high-impact: children’s online safety, privacy and data security, healthcare and recovery fraud, unlawful telemarketing, anticompetitive mergers, labor-market restraints, and Big Tech conduct affecting consumers, workers, or competition. The Plan also expressly sets forth goals for agency staff to improve negotiation and litigation skills and continues to frame both consumer protection and antitrust enforcement around civil actions, federal court litigation, and consent orders.

Consumer Protection Priorities

The FTC identifies deception, fraud (including opioid recovery and other health-related fraud), privacy and data security, unlawful telemarketing, ticket sales, harms affecting older adults and servicemembers, and children’s online safety as key consumer protection focus areas. Companies with consumer-facing claims, digital products, children’s data, telemarketing, or health-related offerings should expect the agency to use consumer reports, ad monitoring, online reviews, referrals, and technology-enabled investigations to identify targets. The agency also intends to engage with local community organizations, small businesses, and workers to educate consumers on their rights, encourage reporting, and identify potential violations.

Antitrust Priorities

On competition, the FTC will continue to investigate proposed and consummated mergers and business conduct that may be anticompetitive. The Plan’s express goal of “promot[ing] competition” marks a shift from the FY 2022–2026 Strategic Plan, in which the prior administration moved away from the consumer welfare standard and encouraged enforcers to assess competitive harms beyond whether mergers or business conduct raised prices or reduced output.

The Plan highlights the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (“HSR”) Premerger Notification process and the revised Merger Guidelines as screening tools, emphasizes rigorous oversight of HSR obligations and Commission orders, and states that the FTC will be prepared to litigate when parties offer ineffective or unenforceable remedies. The Plan also signals more in-house litigation capacity, including training and using FTC economists as expert witnesses to reduce reliance and expense on outside experts. Labor-market conduct also remains squarely in view, including no-poach, non-solicitation, no-hire, noncompete, wage-fixing, and certain coordination affecting worker wages and benefits.

Cross-Border Collaboration

The Plan calls for continued collaboration internationally on enforcement and policy work in both consumer protection and antitrust. For consumer protection, the Plan emphasizes cooperation with foreign counterparts on telemarketing, internet fraud, and other cross-border unlawful conduct; for competition, it highlights engagement with foreign antitrust authorities on matters under review in multiple jurisdictions.

Business-Friendly Signals

The Plan restores the idea that the FTC should enforce the law “without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” and links agency success to measurable benefits, operational efficiency, and practical guidance for businesses. That framing may help companies that can demonstrate credible compliance, procompetitive justifications, and workable remedies, but it does not eliminate risk in the agency’s stated priority areas.

Key Takeaways for Businesses

• Consumer protection: Reassess advertising claims, privacy and data security practices, children’s online services, telemarketing programs, health-related representations, and consumer complaint escalation processes.
• Antitrust and M&A: Build antitrust analysis, document discipline, and HSR planning into transaction timelines early, especially where labor, digital platform, technology, healthcare, or concentrated-market issues may be present.
• Labor markets: Evaluate no-poach, no-hire, non-solicitation, noncompete, wage-setting, benchmarking, and employment-data coordination practices for antitrust risk.
• Business posture: Use the Plan’s emphasis on legitimate business activity, measurable benefits, and practical guidance to present facts, compliance evidence, and practical remedies, but do not relax controls in priority areas.

* Stephen Creighton is a summer associate in our Washington office.

¹ The Plan’s renewed focus on consumers rather than the broader “public” marks a significant shift and a return to decades of FTC enforcement tradition.

² This phrase, introduced in the agency’s first Strategic Plan for 1997–2002, was used continuously in subsequent plans for 2003 through 2022 but was noticeably removed from the Plan for 2022–2026.

This information is provided by Vinson & Elkins LLP for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended, nor should it be construed, as legal advice.