WASHINGTON—President Biden on Friday will sign a broad executive order that aims to promote competitive markets and limit corporate dominance that the White House says puts consumers, workers and smaller firms at a disadvantage.
The order encourages agencies across the federal government to adopt policies and write regulations that push back against corporate consolidation and business practices that may stifle competition, lead to higher prices and lead to fewer product choices.
Among the White House’s targets are agriculture, healthcare, shipping, transportation and technology, as well as labor practices that the administration says limit wages and mobility. The executive order also seeks to promote affordable broadband and boost consumers’ rights to repair products they own, an issue of concern because of limitations imposed by an array of companies.
The order “will lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth,” the White House said Friday.
Mr. Biden’s move, months in the making, comes as Democrats have made competition policy and antitrust enforcement a key part of their agenda, arguing U.S. officials haven’t done enough to preserve healthy, competitive markets.
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Republicans have agreed in some circumstances, particularly in the tech sector, but they along with business groups have disputed arguments that the U.S. has extensive problems with economic concentration.
Critics say the Biden administration is starting from a faulty premise and risks making the U.S. economy less productive as a result.
“The broad, overarching explanatory theory that the Biden administration has, that all problems stem from monopoly and all problems can be solved by competition policy—it’s not at all what the evidence suggests,” said
Rob Atkinson,
president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank that takes funding from corporations and nonprofit groups. “The risk is that you would end up making companies that have valid economies of scale and scope and other benefits of size—you would start to diminish that.”
Mr. Biden’s order by itself doesn’t impose new requirements on the business community. The success of the White House effort could depend on how hard—and how quickly—government agencies push to implement his competition policies, which are likely to face court challenges.
The Biden administration initiative follows a similar effort by the Obama White House during its last year. The new order is more explicit in pushing government agencies to take detailed steps to protect competition, and it comes at the beginning of a presidential term, giving Mr. Biden’s appointees across the executive branch more time to align their priorities and implement regulations.
A key architect of the order was Tim Wu, special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy in the White House National Economic Council, according to people familiar with the matter. An academic before joining the White House in March, Mr. Wu wrote books and papers arguing that large American corporations hold too much market power and that numerous federal agencies could deploy their authority to help boost competition.
The White House should create a new competition council to “pressure agencies to open up closed markets while discouraging agencies from entrenching the industries that they regulate,” he said in a 2020 paper he co-wrote with other former Obama administration officials. Friday’s order will create such a council.
The executive order also touches on issues Mr. Biden has highlighted for years, including the use of noncompete clauses to limit workers’ mobility. In a 2018 speech, he warned: “The rise of monopolies weaken labor.”
Several pieces of the executive order could provide a springboard for plans already being formulated at some government agencies, especially the Federal Trade Commission, which shares antitrust authority with the Justice Department.
The order encourages the FTC to write first-ever rules barring certain types of allegedly anticompetitive practices including “unfair methods of competition on internet marketplaces,” according to the White House. Mr. Biden’s new head of the FTC, Lina Khan, has previously voiced support for such efforts. They are likely to spark a partisan battle on the five-member commission.
The executive order also will encourage the FTC to regulate large technology platforms by establishing “rules on surveillance and the accumulation of data.” Outside of the tech space, the order asks the FTC to ban or limit noncompete agreements and unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions, and to limit employers’ ability to share wage and benefits data. The White House also wants the commission to limit manufacturers’ ability to restrict consumers from using independent repair shops or do-it-yourself solutions for fixing products ranging from cellphones to tractors.
On agriculture, the executive order will elevate concerns from smaller farmers and distributors who have said they feel beholden to dominant agribusiness concerns. Mr. Biden will direct the Agriculture Department to consider new rules that would make it easier for farmers to win certain types of claims under a federal law designed to preserve fair competition and trade practices in the industry.
For the transportation industry, the president is calling on the Transportation Department to issue new rules that require airlines to better disclose certain fees and to provide refunds when baggage is delayed or certain services aren’t provided. The president is encouraging the Federal Maritime Commission and the Surface Transportation Board to combat what the Biden administration sees as a pattern of consolidation and aggressive pricing that has made it expensive for American companies to transport goods to market.
In the healthcare sector, the order encourages the FTC to ban “pay for delay” deals between competing drug manufacturers that can slow the release of generic drugs. It calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to combat high prescription drug prices and support lower-cost generic drugs.
The order also targets internet-service providers. It encourages the Federal Communications Commission to regulate pricing disclosures, contract termination fees and deals between providers and landlords, which the White House says limit broadband options for tenants.
In banking, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is encouraged to issue new rules allowing customers to download their banking data from one bank and take it to another.
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