Technology Policy Brief #154 | Mindy Spatt | August 6, 2025
Summary
Few people are likely to miss the click-to-cancel rule. Consumers won’t, since they never had a chance to enjoy it, and businesses won’t because they hated it. The rule, which would have required all sorts of online businesses to make it easy for consumers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships, was blocked by a federal appeals court just days before it was set to go into effect, a ruling that is unlikely to be appealed. Trump opposes consumer protections and is reshaping the FTC to carry forward his pro-business agenda.
Analysis
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved click to cancel in October 2024. It would have given consumers minimal rights that shouldn’t be controversial, such as requiring a customer’s consent before charging them for memberships, automatic renewals, and extensions of free trials into paid subscriptions. It would have made canceling subscriptions easier, more akin to the ease with which they can be started.
The rule was approved by the Biden FTC, and the Trump-appointed Commission is unlikely to press the issue, which on its face is a dispute over the financial impacts of the change, which, if over $100 million, would require a more robust regulatory analysis than the less than $100 category the FTC previously assigned to it.
In vacating the rule, the court said, “While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here.
Fatal is pretty close to what former Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya warns Trump’s impact on the FTC will be. Bedoya, who was fired by Trump, accused Trump of trying to turn the FTC from a “fierce corporate watchdog” into “little lapdogs for his golfing buddies.”
Speaking at a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Denver on March 21, Bedoya introduced himself as a sitting member of the Federal Trade Commission despite having been fired just three days earlier. Both Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, another Commissioner fired by Trump, have been vocal in their criticisms of the Trump administration.
Their firings upended the longstanding practice that sitting members of the FTC can be fired only for an extremely narrow set of reasons. Slaughter sued on that basis, and a federal district court ruled in her favor, but the administration won a restraining order on the district court’s order for her to be reinstated.
By law, there can only be three Commissioners from the same party.
The new chair of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, was one of two republicans appointed by former President Biden. FTC Commissioners not of the president’s party are traditionally selected by congressional leadership of the other party, and Ferguson is a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell. (The other Biden republican appointee still serving is Melissa Holyoak).
Ferguson appears to be on board with the Trump agenda. He has already dismantled the FTC’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, moved to consolidate his power at the agency, and removed several requests for public comment. Those requests are a cornerstone of the FTC’s process. According to the agency’s website, “Comments from the public help us learn about new technologies and business practices, consider diverse points of view, and improve the quality of our policy-making, law enforcement, and education efforts.
Trump’s first appointee to the Commission, Mark R. Meador, who previously worked at the FTC, the Department of Justice, and in private industry, was a visiting fellow at the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center. The two democratic seats remain empty.
Engagement Resources
To submit comments to the FCC, start here:
https://www.ftc.gov/policy/public-comments
FTC’s Click-to-Cancel Rules Would Make It Easier to End Subscriptions, PBS Newshour, Oct 22, 2024https://youtu.be/XPBgH1p4izM?si=DGWkDL8SwL3Y2Wmy
Why Washington And The Business World Are Freaking Out About Trump’s FTC Firings, Nate Robson, March 20, 2025 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/20/trumps-firings-could-break-the-110-year-old-ftc-00239807
Why the FTC’s Click-to-Cancel Rule Deserved Better, John Bergmayer, July 11, 2025, https://publicknowledge.org/why-click-to-cancel-deserved-better/