President Biden’s executive order opens a new front in the battle with major tech companies

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WASHINGTON – President Biden’s sweeping new competition regime targets big tech companies in ways that could fundamentally change the way they do business.

But it will fall to government agencies to implement the order, and it may take years to put his ideas into practice. The Federal Trade Commission, which already has big tech companies, is likely to become a private battleground.

The primary goal of this order is to encourage regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to adopt new rules and policies to curb the growing size and power of big tech platforms like Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., Google, and Facebook Inc. This can be challenging for the FTC, the main federal regulator of online commerce. Some observers say the agency — whose sail was pruned by Congress in the era of deregulation in the 1970s and 80s — has struggled to keep up with unfair online practices, particularly in the areas of user privacy, big data, and technology mergers.

As the White House explained its executive order, one Democratic Federal Trade Commission Commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, stated in a tweet: “Very excited about @POTUS’s EO in competition; it’s an ambitious agenda that will help our markets do better and create a fairer economy for all people.” — especially workers, marginalized communities, entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association of which Apple, Facebook and Google are among its members, defended the tech industry as competitive and dynamic and made the White House’s decision.

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