President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order Friday directing or encouraging more than a dozen federal agencies to pursue 72 initiatives intended to increase competition across industries ranging from airlines and broadband to prescription drugs, agriculture, banking and technology.

The order is one of the broadest attempts in decades to make competition policy a government-wide economic strategy rather than a responsibility confined primarily to antitrust lawsuits. It instructs executive agencies to examine labor-market restrictions, transportation fees, hospital and drug markets, internet service, meatpacking, banking and other concentrated sectors while encouraging independent regulators to take parallel action.

A White House fact sheet says the initiative responds to decades of consolidation and argues that diminished competition has increased prices, weakened workers’ bargaining power and made it harder for small businesses to enter markets dominated by large firms. Many of the provisions are not self-executing: agencies must still write rules, conduct studies or bring enforcement cases under existing statutes.

Competition policy expands beyond courtroom antitrust

The order begins from a premise that differs from the narrower consumer-price approach that has guided much federal antitrust policy for decades. Biden’s framework explicitly identifies workers, farmers, small businesses, startups and consumers as constituencies affected by market concentration.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a July 9 statement that the Justice Department would immediately begin the interagency collaborations called for by the order and would continue vigorous enforcement of federal antitrust laws. The department shares merger and competition authority with the Federal Trade Commission, whose new chair, Lina Khan, has advocated a more skeptical approach to dominant firms.

That shift is already visible in merger policy. Acting Antitrust Division chief Richard Powers and Khan said in a joint statement that existing merger guidelines deserve a “hard look” to determine whether they are overly permissive. A review could change how regulators analyze consolidation across technology, health care, agriculture and other industries.

Workers, consumers and travelers are direct targets

For workers, the order encourages the FTC to restrict or ban noncompete agreements that can prevent employees from taking jobs with competing firms. It also calls for scrutiny of occupational licensing and other practices that may limit labor mobility. The premise is that competition exists not only for consumers but also for employees selling their labor.

For airline passengers, the administration is moving immediately. The Transportation Department announced a July 9 proposal that would require carriers to refund checked-bag fees when bags are significantly delayed and refund charges for services such as advance seat selection or Wi-Fi when those services are not provided.

The order also urges stronger protections against excessive airline fees and directs broader review of competition in commercial aviation. The airline provisions illustrate the administration’s strategy: rather than wait for a major merger case, it is using sector-specific regulatory authority to change the terms on which concentrated industries deal with consumers.

Broadband, technology and right-to-repair come into focus

In communications, the order encourages the Federal Communications Commission to restore net-neutrality protections, require clearer broadband pricing disclosures and limit certain exclusive arrangements that can restrict consumer choice in apartment buildings. Those actions would require FCC proceedings rather than taking effect immediately.

The order also calls on the FTC to address restrictions that prevent independent or self-repair of products, an issue affecting farmers, electronics owners and other consumers whose equipment increasingly depends on proprietary software and parts. The right-to-repair directive places product-service markets inside the administration’s competition agenda.

Technology companies face scrutiny on several fronts. The order encourages greater attention to acquisitions by dominant internet platforms, including transactions involving nascent competitors, data accumulation and free products whose competitive effects may not be captured by conventional price analysis. The merger-guideline review announced by DOJ and FTC could become the mechanism for turning that policy preference into enforcement standards.

Health care and agriculture get sector-specific instructions

Prescription drugs, hospitals and hearing aids are prominent health-care targets. The administration wants agencies to accelerate rules allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter, support state and tribal efforts to import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada where legally permissible, and examine hospital consolidation and insurance practices that may limit competition.

Agriculture receives similarly detailed treatment. The order directs the Department of Agriculture to consider stronger rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act and other measures aimed at livestock markets, meatpacking and the ability of farmers to repair equipment. The Justice Department issued a same-day statement supporting USDA efforts to invest in competition and expand meat-processing capacity.

The administration’s budget office describes the approach as intentionally cross-government. A July 9 analysis from the Office of Management and Budget lists expected involvement by Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation and several independent regulators.

The order’s breadth is also its limitation. An executive order cannot rewrite antitrust statutes, guarantee that independent agencies will adopt requested rules or predetermine how courts will rule. Many initiatives must survive notice-and-comment rulemaking, legal challenges and changes in agency leadership.

Business groups are likely to argue that some measures substitute regulatory judgment for market outcomes and could increase costs or discourage investment. Supporters will contend that decades of consolidation have produced markets in which nominal consumer choice masks limited bargaining power and barriers to entry.

The immediate significance is institutional. Biden has told the federal bureaucracy to treat competition as an organizing economic principle and created a White House Competition Council to track implementation. That makes Friday’s action less a single regulation than a portfolio of dozens of future fights over how government defines market power and what it is willing to do about it.

If agencies carry out even a portion of the 72 initiatives, Americans could encounter the effects in unusually ordinary places: employment contracts, airline receipts, internet bills, prescription counters, farm equipment repairs and the applications installed on their phones. The scope of the order ensures that competition policy, once an obscure legal specialty, will become a visible part of the administration’s domestic economic program.