In the final days of the Biden administration, staff of outgoing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan reportedly consulted with Chinese online retailer Temu about Amazon’s pricing policies.

The FTC is suing Seattle-based Amazon, alleging anti-competitive practices.

According to The Information, a news site focused on covering the technology industry, FTC staff reached out to Temu representatives with questions about Amazon's pricing policies.

"The FTC sent a letter with questions to Temu and spoke with representatives of the PDD Holdings-owned site on the phone," The Information reported, citing two unnamed sources. "The communications took place before Jan. 20, when Biden-appointed FTC Chair Lina Khan stepped down and was replaced by Trump appointee Andrew Ferguson."

The news drew the ire of consumer advocacy groups that have been seeking an investigation into Chinese-owned Temu over alleged unfair trade practices.

“Apparently the recent FTC chair didn’t think twice about asking Temu to provide ammunition against Amazon, which employs 1,525,000 Americans," Robert Bork Jr., president of the Antitrust Education Project, said in a statement provided to The Center Square.

Bork, former U.S. Senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others have accused the Chinese Communist Party-backed Temu of using slave labor and other anti-competitive tactics to sell directly to U.S. consumers, avoiding paying import taxes and regulatory safety checks and eating into the U.S. market share.

"Rather than investigate Temu and another Chinese company, Shein, for their business practices, Khan instead pressed a nonsensical case against Amazon, claiming that its discounting policy is somehow raising prices,” Bork said.

Temu launched in September 2022 and had 51.4 million users as of January 2024, according to the New York Post. While Amazon still dominates the U.S. in online retail market share, Temu has been closing the gap because of its cheap products, MarketWatch reported.

Temu and Singapore-based Shein have been accused of offering direct-to-consumer products that often don't meet U.S. safety standards at costs well below market value. Items listed for sale include beauty products for young women and girls for as low as a penny, and kids clothing for less than $10, well below average American direct-to-consumer merchants' prices such as can be found at Amazon and other outlets, The Center Square previously reported.

Then Sen. Rubio last year asked U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate Shein and Temu over the use of slave labor and add them to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act list of violators.

“It is past time for the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to begin adding entities to the UFLPA exporter list," Rubio said then. "Private firms and journalists have unearthed compelling evidence that both Shein and Temu are facilitating the entry of goods made with Uyghur forced labor."

A June 2023 report by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party found that Temu and SHEIN take advantage of what's known as the de minimis trade rule, which dictates that imported packages valued at or below $800 receive tax exemptions and are subject to less oversight from U.S. customs.

Amazon's anti-trust trial is scheduled to begin next year. With President Donald Trump succeeding Biden and Trump replacing Khan with Ferguson, it's unclear how the FTC's case against Amazon will proceed.

“Under the President’s leadership, we will end the previous administration’s assault on the American way of life, and we will usher in a new Golden Age for American businesses, workers, and consumers,” Ferguson said in a Jan. 22 news release.