Steptoe & Johnson launches online competition tracker

Steptoe & Johnson launches online competition tracker

Tracker will monitor the progress and provide analysis on developments and how they will impact individual industries as the US moves to a new era of antitrust law enforcement

Steptoe & Johnson, the Washington DC-based law firm, has unveiled an online competition tracker. It will monitor developments related to US President Joe Biden's recent executive order that aims to curb monopolies and enforce greater compliance to the US antitrust laws.

President Biden had on 9 July issued the executive order, Promoting Competition in the American Economy, which has tasked agencies and regulators to clamp down on antitrust activities in sectors such as technology, telecoms, energy, transportation, agriculture and pharmaceuticals, among others.

The Executive Order on Competition (EOC) intends to help bring down costs for consumers, bring down internet rates and increase wages. Steptoe & Johnson claims its EOC Tracker is a one-stop resource for clients to keep tabs on the impacts of the order and associated deadlines.

"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, fulfil their enumerated responsibilities under the order," Micah Green, government affairs and finance partner at Steptoe & Johnson, said.

According to Green, who is spearheading the EOC Tracker project alongside antitrust partner Michael Weiner, 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.

The US President has created a new agency - the White House Competition Council - that intends to address issues like excessive concentration, market power abuses, unfair competition and the impacts of monopolies. It has also outlined 72 specific initiatives to meet those goals.

Steptoe's antitrust partner Weiner termed the presidential executive order a potentially significant turning point in antitrust enforcement and said that it is the strongest indication yet that the Biden Administration will apply the toughest enforcement of antitrust laws since the pre-Reagan era.

Steptoe's EOC Tracker intends to monitor the progress of those initiatives, provide analysis on developments and how they will impact individual industries.