Donald Trump ruled by Presidential executive order with very little of his controversial polices approved by Congress – the 2017 tax cuts being a big exception and 2020’s first stimulus package.
Joe Biden’s big stimulus package struggled through Congress earlier this year but won approval, but he has also been using Presidential executive order to change many of Trump’s odder and controversial policies.
But no one has tried to change economic activity, performance, the governance of business, enhance competition, hit at anti-consumer and monopolist practices – no one, that is, until President Biden signed an executive order doing just that on Friday.
The sweeping executive order aims to promote more competition in the US economy, urging Federal agencies to crack down on anti-competitive practices in sectors from agriculture to drugs and labor.
Biden’s action goes after corporate monopolies across a number of industries, and includes 72 initiatives he wants more than a dozen federal agencies to act on.
The order instructs antitrust agencies to focus on labor, healthcare, technology and agriculture as they address a long list of issues that have irritated consumers, farmers and many small businesses.
If fully implemented, the effort could help lower Americans’ internet costs, allow for airline baggage fee refunds for delayed luggage and cut some prescription drug prices, among many other steps.
But there is a lot of scepticism that this will happen.
Biden said the order “commits the federal government to full and aggressive enforcement of our antitrust laws.”
“No more tolerance of abusive actions by monopolies. No more bad mergers that lead to massive layoffs, higher prices and fewer options for workers and consumers alike,” he said at a White House signing ceremony.
Biden said many people in the US felt that prices are too high, wages are tamped down or new businesses excluded from competition. “Let me be very clear, capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism, it’s exploitation,” he said on Friday.
Among the administration’s plans to open up the US economy are new rules to mandate ending excessive internet contract termination fees, allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and end non-compete clauses for millions of workers and many occupational licensing requirements.
The executive order will direct the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to carefully review mergers, and to challenge prior deals that have closed.
It directs the FTC to issue rules to address competition concerns from Big Tech companies, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Amazon, and limit “killer acquisitions” where large internet platforms acquire potential competitors.
This could be a major area of activity with many Trump supporters among the right-wing republicans sharing scepticism about Big Tech.
Biden’s order pushes the Agriculture Department to act to stop what the White House called “abusive practices of some meat processors,” reacting to farmers and ranchers who sometimes say they face too few buyers for their animals.
Biden’s administration also wants to make it easier for customers to switch banks and take their transaction data with them, and restore neutrality rules that require companies to treat all internet services equally.
Besides more closely scrutinising the tech industry, Biden wants to see a crackdown on high fees charged by ocean shippers, more scrutiny of the sales of hearing aids and why they can’t be sold over the counter (which could impact Cochlear, the Australian hearing aid company) and its rivals.
Big business was quick to react with the US Chamber of Commerce issuing a statement saying the move “smacks of a ‘government knows best’ approach to managing the economy” and pledged to “vigorously oppose calls for government-set prices, onerous and legally questionable rule-makings, efforts to treat innovative industries as public utilities, and the politicisation of antitrust enforcement.”
Republicans in Congress vowed to try and stop the rules changing but will have the same difficulty as Democrats had in trying to stop some of Trump’s excesses.
Experts warn that in many areas, the president will need to work with Congress to change federal laws if he hopes to have more success than former President Donald Trump, who also issued competition-focused executive orders and who saw limited results from them.
Many of the agencies mentioned in Friday’s executive order – such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission – are independent, meaning the White House can only encourage them, not direct them, to take specific steps.
But The New York Times reported that those agencies largely embraced the proposals on Friday and promised to take action, especially with most now being directed by Democrats.
