Overview
(July 22, 2021, Washington, DC) — Steptoe & Johnson LLP announces the creation of the Executive Order on Competition (EOC) Tracker, a one-stop resource for keeping up with the latest developments and deadlines stemming from President Biden's Executive Order calling for more vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws and for agencies and regulators to use their existing authority to ensure competitive environments across the economy. Steptoe's EOC Tracker draws on the firm's decades of experience and deep bench of practices in antitrust, regulated industries affected by the order, and government affairs.
Steptoe antitrust partner Michael Weiner, who is spearheading the initiative with government affairs and financial services partner Micah Green, commented: "President Biden's Executive Order on Competition represents a potential significant turning point in antitrust enforcement. The initiatives set forth in the Executive Order, coupled with the appointments of Lina Khan as FTC Chair, Jonathan Kanter as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and Tim Wu to the National Economic Council, are the latest and strongest indications that the Biden Administration is committed to the most vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws since prior to the election of Ronald Reagan."
Green added: "The president's Executive Order on Competition will affect numerous sectors throughout the economy. Harnessing our regulatory capabilities across so many of the affected areas, our EOC Tracker is a cross-practice initiative that will be continuously updated as the various agencies, including virtually every financial services regulator, fulfill their enumerated responsibilities under the order. Many of those tasks have deadlines and others are more open ended. But across industry sectors, it is critical for businesses and market participants to stay current on these developments."
Along with ramping up enforcement of the antitrust laws, the unprecedented July 9 EO directs and/or encourages more than a dozen federal agencies to implement specific new regulatory policies and/or to implement the policies embraced in the EO, with various degrees of specific directions. The EO is intended to have a significant impact on numerous sectors of the economy, including technology, telecom, energy, transportation, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, banking and finance, and labor.
The EO creates a new inter-agency White House Competition Council and calls for a "whole-of-government approach" to address excessive concentration, abuses of market power, unfair competition, and the effects of monopoly and monopsony. The EO calls for all federal agencies to implement the policies it sets forth, and includes 72 specific initiatives to further those goals. This entire initiative is being pursued under existing statutory authority and as a result the Administration is not seeking additional authority from the Congress at this time.
Steptoe’s EOC Tracker will identify each of those initiatives and be a repository to monitor progress by each of the agencies directed or encouraged to take specific actions. The EOC Tracker will also present a convenient resource for relevant developments, by industry, as the EO is implemented. The EOC Tracker will be updated to reflect the latest developments and include analysis to provide perspective on the impact of the EO on individual industries.
Among the Steptoe practices that are providing developments to the EOC Tracker include antitrust, government affairs, telecom, energy, transportation, intellectual property, labor, and financial services.
A comprehensive list of the initiatives, including those with and without specific deadlines, enumerated in the EO can be found here.
To sign up for alerts from the EOC tracker, please click here.
About Steptoe
In more than 100 years of practice, Steptoe has earned an international reputation for vigorous representation of clients before governmental agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice in structuring business transactions. Steptoe has more than 500 lawyers and other professional staff across offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.
