Capping months of anticipation, President Joe Biden on July 9 unveiled his Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which he argues will “lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth.” To achieve these lofty goals, the order prescribes regulatory interventions that interfere with property and contract rights in industry after industry. Undergirding the order is the premise that “competition has weakened in too many markets, denying Americans the benefits of an open economy and widening racial, income, and wealth inequality.” The White House offers only a handful of anecdotes to justify this sweeping conclusion, which remains highly disputed. In fact, few sectors of the U.S. economy are especially concentrated, and many markets that have become concentrated at the national level have become less concentrated at the local level, as national chains open up in more areas.

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