# Federal Trade Commission Act **Signed:** September 26, 1914 by [[Woodrow Wilson]] Created the [[FTC]] and gave it, in **§5**, the open-ended authority to police "unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce" — deliberately broader than the [[Sherman Antitrust Act]] so that an expert body could reach conduct courts had not yet named. The Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938 added "unfair or deceptive acts or practices," which is the basis of the agency's consumer-protection work. The Act is the institutional half of the 1914 settlement: [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s New Nationalism called for a standing expert commission rather than case-by-case litigation, and Congress built one inside [[Woodrow Wilson]]'s New Freedom program, whose prohibitory half became the [[Clayton Antitrust Act]] three weeks later. The Commission opened on March 16, 1915, absorbing the Bureau of Corporations. Its design — five commissioners, no more than three from one party, staggered seven-year terms, removable only for cause — was upheld in *Humphrey's Executor* (1935) and **overruled in [[Trump v. Slaughter]] (2026)**. > Stub — fill out. See [[US Antitrust and Monopoly Timeline]].