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Donald Trump Nominates Rohit Chopra as Federal Trade Commissioner

Rohit Chopra is currently a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America.

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United States President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate consumer rights lawyer Rohit Chopra as a commissioner in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Oct. 19. The New York resident’s nomination is for the remainder of the seven-year term expiring Sept. 25, 2019.

Chopra is currently a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, where he focuses on consumer protection issues facing young people and military families. He also served the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as assistant director for five years where his responsibility was to oversee the agency’s work on student financial services issues. The Secretary of the Treasury also appointed him as the agency’s student loan ombudsman.

In 2016, Chopra served as Special Adviser to the Secretary of Education. Before taking up government service, he was an associate at McKinsey & Company, where he worked in the financial services and consumer technology sectors.

Chopra holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship.

He is an ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a strong consumer advocate.

The FTC is led by five commissioners, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than three commissioners can be from the same party. Chopra is being nominated   to fill the empty Democratic seat on the commission.

Trump also nominated attorney Joseph Simons of Virginia for a seven-year term beginning Sept. 26, 2017 as the chairman of the FTC and is expected to nominate Noah Phillips, the chief counsel for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), for the FTC.

The FTC is an independent agency of the U.S. government for the protection of consumer rights. Its purpose is to protect consumers by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices, enhancing informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process, and accomplishing this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity. The agency was created in 1914.

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