Jessica Smith joins Myles Udland, Brian Sozzi, and Julie Hyman to discuss Biden's new executive orders focused on cracking down on Big Tech's anticompetitive practices and giving workers more leverage in the job market through promoting economic competition.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: President Biden is set to sign an executive order today that is far-reaching in a number of different industries. Our Jessica Smith is here with us to discuss some of the details. There's a lot to choose from in here, but let's start with big tech, because this has been such a longstanding big topic on the Hill. What parts of big tech does this EO attack, and what will happen next as a result of it?

JESSICA SMITH: Well, President Biden says that big tech is undermining competition, reducing innovation in mainly three ways. Those three ways are by buying up would-be competitors, by taking too much personal information from users, and by unfairly competing against small businesses. So he's calling for greater scrutiny of tech mergers. Of course, we know the chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, has a reputation for her criticism of big tech. She has already called for beefing up regulation.

And President Biden is also urging the FTC to establish rules to curb surveillance and data collection of users. And then finally, it's also calling on the FTC to establish rules to bar unfair competition on internet marketplaces. So when companies like Amazon have their own platform and then compete against small businesses who are also selling on that platform, the White House says it wants to stop companies from looking at small businesses' data, then ripping off their products, and then putting their products front and center. That's what the White House says the goal is here. Of course, this comes just shortly after the House Judiciary Committee also passed six antitrust bills aimed at promoting competition in big tech. So we'll have to see over the coming weeks how this gets put into place and what impact this has.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah. And most of these sub-orders within this big one order talk about different regulatory agencies and what they should be doing on a host of different fronts. And as I mentioned, Jess, gosh, there's a lot in here. There are measures on labor. There are measures on prescription pricing. Why not throw that in there? Hearing aids get a mention in here as well. What else stands out to you in terms of all of these various details?

JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, there is a lot in this order. There are 72 different initiatives directing more than a dozen agencies to take different actions. It addresses several different sectors. So you have technology, of course, but then you also have transportation. You have the labor markets, internet service, agriculture, banking, and you also have health care.

Some of the big things that really stick out here are limiting non-compete agreements, those clauses that keep workers from going to a rival company within a certain amount of time of leaving their job. It would ban unnecessary job licensing requirements. The White House says that particularly hurts military families that have to move around often. And it also aims to reduce the price of prescription drugs. It allows hearing aids to be sold over the counter, urges the SEC to restore net neutrality rules.

And it calls for greater scrutiny of mergers across various industries, particularly big tech, again, hospitals, banks. And it does call on the FAA to make new rules to make sure consumers can get their money back if airlines are late in delivering their checked bags or if Wi-Fi on the plane doesn't work. And then they're establishing this council, this competition council that they're calling it, to make sure these agencies are making progress.

So it will monitor all of these initiatives and then see how it's going, what needs to be changed going forward. But President Biden is set to sign this and speak about it at 1:30 this afternoon, guys.

JULIE HYMAN: Look forward to that. Jessica Smith, thanks so much-- giving us the summary, or what can be summarized, in, again, what is a pretty far-reaching executive order that the president is set to sign and speak about this morning, as Jess was talking about. There are also some labor provisions in here. And I should mention a programming note as well. We are going to speak to Bharat Ramamurti, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council for the administration. We will be talking about the EO generally and about some of the labor measures within it more specific.