The Biden administration has just launched an astonishing, ambitious plan to inject competition into some of the most integrated sectors of the American economy including the dominant technology sector through executive action. “Today, President Biden is taking decisive steps to reduce the trend of corporate consolidation, to increase competition, and to better benefit American consumers, workers, farmers, and small businesses,” the White House said in a new White House fact sheet.
The order, signed by Biden on Friday, introduces a broader “full-government” approach that spans twelve different agencies at the federal level to control monopolies, protect consumers and prevent misconduct from some of the world’s largest corporations. In the fact sheet, the White House outlines plans to take matters into its own hands at the federal level. As a technology, it comes primarily by encouraging the FTC and the judiciary – two federal agencies with incredible enforcement powers.
Most notably for Big Tech, which is already suppressing the threat of regulatory existence, the White House has made it clear that “there was no challenge before the previous administration to challenge the agencies’ previous bad additions” – e.g., the reluctant acquisitions that made the handful There is also the hem order calling on unreliable organizations to enforce the no-confidence law “vigorously”. Federal Verification-Selection will prioritize “influential Internet platforms, with particular focus on competitors, serial attachments, data collection, competition by‘ free ’products, and impacts on user privacy.
Facebook, Google and Amazon are on special notice here, though Apple can’t avoid federal attention. “Over the past ten years, the largest tech platforms have acquired hundreds of companies – including the alleged ‘killer acquisition’ to block a potential competitive threat,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet. “Often, federal agencies have blocked, conditionalized or in some cases, that is, these acquisitions have not been examined.”
The largest technology companies have defended their long-standing strategy of buying regular competition with the argument that these acquisitions were made without any hatred at the time, so they should not be seen as illegal in the dark. In any uncertain terms, the new executive order makes it clear that the Biden administration has nothing to do with it.
