Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies

Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies

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Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies

US President Joe Biden pointed out this Friday against technology monopolies and pharmaceutical companies: he signed an executive order that seeks to limit its power in order to promote labor mobility, improve wages and lower the prices of many products.

The decision was made by Biden through an executive order, the main objective of which is to empower greater competitiveness in the American economy.

Achieve in short, said the president himself in a speech before signing the decree, “lower prices and higher wages” to take another important step towards an economy “that works for everyone”.

Biden, who insisted on several occasions that he is a “proud capitalist”, a distant position to which the conservative sectors try to pigeonhole him, argued that this type of economic system should promote competition “open and fair” for US development

The measure focuses on large companies, among which Big Tech, known as GAFAM They (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) are a threat to competition: In the middle of last month, Biden actually promoted five antitrust laws against them.

Promote competitiveness

Biden, after signing the executive order, aboard Air Force One. AFP Photo

In his speech at the White House, Biden explained that a competitive economy “means that companies must do everything they can to compete for workers“offering higher wages, more flexible hours and better benefits.

However, he criticized the technology, pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors for “consuming their competitors, instead of competing for their workers.”

“And, too often, the government made it harder for the new companies enter and compete“, he acknowledged.

In fact, according to data from the White House, the rate of formation of new companies in the US has fallen by almost a 50% since the 1970sBecause “big business makes it difficult for Americans with good ideas to enter markets.”

The decree will also limit the so-called non-competition clauses that govern many labor contracts. Biden acknowledged in his speech to have been surprised to discover the “incredible” number of such clauses that existIn companies of the USA for the “common people”.

Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies

Gafam. Photo: Shutterstock

As an example, he said that a worker at the multinational Burger King cannot leave his job to go to McDonald’s, another large fast food chain, for this type of contractual conditions.

Is there a trade secret about what’s inside those burgers?? “, joked the president, who stressed that workers” should be free “to accept a better job if someone offers it.

That is why among the 72 measures included in the executive order is that of asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that prohibits or limits agreements of this type, which will facilitate labor mobility and higher wages.

Internet and pharmaceuticals

Joe Biden signs executive order to regulate tech monopolies

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. AP Photo

The White House also hopes that the rule will serve to improve competitiveness in numerous prices of products and services that Americans consume every day, among which Biden he cited the internet and drugs.

He thus spoke of the difficulties that Americans experience in adjusting their family budgets to the price, for example, of medicines, in the hands of the pharmaceutical oligopoly, which rise exponentially over the years.

“Only a handful of companies control the market of many vital medications“And for this reason, Americans” pay two and a half times “more for prescriptions than in any other developed country, he warned.

The decree also sets the objective on many other day-to-day issues in which there are abusive prices or it is difficult to find alternatives.

Facilitate the refunds of money by the airlines or greater clarity in the prices of the flights; make repair services cheaper ending the exclusivity imposed by the manufacturer or making it easier to change banks are among the measures included in the standard.

It is also committed to ending the abusive practices that large processing companies have towards the farms that supply them.