Trump’s Undoing of Consumer Protections & the War on the Working Class

This essay appeared in the Sept. 9, 2025 edition of UNFTR’s premium newsletter. Become a UNFTR member to receive our bonus newsletter each week and for other perks.

Even as many Democratic voters, including progressives, reached their breaking point with President Biden in the latter half of his presidency, there was one bright spot amid all the angst: His administration was more pro-consumer than any in modern history.

Whether through overarching policy to more heavily scrutinize proposed mergers or bringing lawsuits against monopolies and corporate giants across industries, the Biden-era fight against industry titans—mostly championed by agency heads like Lina Khan, the former FTC chair, and Jonathan Kanter, who headed the DOJ’s antitrust division—marked a welcome change in Washington.

The regulatory push was noteworthy because the Biden administration wasn’t just pursuing changes in some nondescript government office—it offered proposals explicitly tied to Americans’ wallets.

Biden himself put the financial sector on notice when he lambasted so-called “junk fees” during his 2023 State of the Union address.

“Not anymore,” Biden declared of the seemingly arbitrary fees Americans are often forced to pay when completing various online transactions.

And there was more:

• Gym memberships or subscriptions that are arduous to cancel? Biden’s FTC under Lina Khan announced a click-to-cancel rule to make it easier to stop recurring payments.
• Contracts that prevent people from getting new jobs in their industry? Khan declared an end to so-called “non-competes,” which she characterized as pernicious and unfair.
• Airlines that make it nearly impossible to get refunds for flights gone awry—or that never took off in the first place? In 2024, the Transportation Department introduced a new rule forcing airlines to automatically process refunds for certain cancelled or delayed flights.

Khan appeared particularly outraged by the ubiquity of junk fees, saying they “cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year—money that corporations are extracting from working families just because they can.”

The consumer-first approach in Washington didn’t last long. In his nine months in office, Trump has effectively tilted the balance of power overwhelmingly back in favor of major corporations.

For the MAGA contingent that still thinks Trump is fighting for the working class, the evidence of his betrayal should have hit like a wave immediately—when Silicon Valley elites and other major companies fawned over him at his inauguration, or when huge donations started rolling in to support his inaugural committee (see: Delta and United Airlines contributing $1 million each).

The embarrassing con game hasn’t let up. Just last week, Trump hosted a White House dinner with leading tech oligarchs, including Bill Gates, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg. When Trump asked how much Meta planned to invest in the United States, Zuckerberg offered a seemingly arbitrary number, then was caught on a hot mic telling Trump: “Sorry, I wasn’t ready…I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”

Last week’s dinner summed up Trump 2.0: a presidency that amounts to a parade of elites making pilgrimages to the White House to placate their dear leader.

The working class, which historically made up much of Trump’s base, has been effectively snubbed.

All of the aforementioned Biden-era rules have been scrapped—either by the Trump administration directly or by the courts. In some cases, government agencies have essentially allowed regulations to die a slow death by delaying enforcement and allowing litigation to take hold, as with the now-dead click-to-cancel rule.

Similarly, the Trump Department of Justice has dropped its appeals in two cases related to the FTC’s non-compete policy, essentially burying it.

Last week, the administration announced it wasn’t moving ahead with Biden’s plan to make airlines compensate passengers for cancellations or delays—an expected move following significant industry lobbying, including by Airlines for America, which wrote a 93-page missive slamming Biden’s Transportation Department while prostrating itself before Trump’s deregulatory agenda.

“We urge the DOT to aggressively implement President Trump’s deregulatory agenda in the spirit of Congress’s deregulatory mandate for airlines—now is the time for the re-deregulation of the airline industry that can unleash American prosperity and the new ‘golden age’ of air travel in America,” the lobbying group wrote in its response to the refund rule and other proposed regulatory changes.

The American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive think tank, has repeatedly slammed Trump for abandoning the Biden-era rules. As for its response to the airline refund rule, it didn’t hold back:

“The DOT’s agenda reads like it was copy-pasted directly from Airlines for America, the lobbying arm of the largest carriers,” said William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation & Travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “At a time when most Americans are already dissatisfied with the state of air travel, the DOT is taking marching orders from deep-pocketed lobbyists and ushering in a new era of flying dystopia. Even by just proposing these rules, before they become official policy, the DOT is telling airlines they can deny refunds, hide fees, and strand passengers without consequence. The United States lags much of the world when it comes to passenger rights, but the largest carriers now want to eliminate even the most basic protections.”

Industry darlings now run both the Transportation Department and FTC: Sean Duffy and Andrew Ferguson, respectively. Duffy, a former reality TV star, Fox News host, and congressman, previously served as a lobbyist for BGR Government Affairs, which counted Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, an airline industry coalition, as one of its clients.

Airlines for America was “thrilled” over Duffy’s nomination earlier this year, stating: “Congressman Duffy has a proven track record for getting things done, and we are eager to collaborate with him on key issues impacting the U.S. airline industry.”

Ferguson, Trump’s FTC chair, made his intentions clear when he assumed his role in January, saying the administration would “usher in a new Golden Age for American businesses, workers, and consumers.”

To his credit, he got that first part right.

Industry, even with tariff confusion, has the upper hand. By abandoning the Biden-era rules meant to give consumers the slightest taste of something akin to fairness, Trump has rebranded himself as a modern-day kingpin. And the gifts—extravagant as ever—have poured in. Corporate capture isn’t new, but it’s never been more in our face. Yet Trump continues to con people into thinking he’s fighting for the everyman, when the real war is the oligarchy versus the rest of us.

Image Source

• The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.