Over the course of Joe Biden’s presidency, federal regulators have orchestrated a sweeping consumer protection push unlike any since the 1970s.
The administration declared war on so-called “junk fees,” tangled with auto-dealers and credit card companies, and took aim at everyday headaches that plague shoppers like fake online reviews and tricky-to-cancel subscriptions. Along the way, watchdogs dusted off legal authorities that had gone mostly unused for decades in attempts to impose stiff new rules on industry.
How Tuesday’s election plays out will likely determine whether that revival continues or gets cut short, advocates say. Though both candidates have left key questions about policy and staff unanswered, some consumer groups say they expect that Vice President Kamala Harris would carry on much of Biden’s approach, while former President Donald Trump would bring an enforcement rollback similar to his first term in office.
“The contrast between Harris and Trump on these issues could not be more clear,” said Sophie GIlbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “One stands for fighting for consumers, and the other for the richest among us.”
Biden’s record
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra (L) and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan (R) listen as US President Joe Biden speaks about new economic actions by his administration in Washington, DC, on October 26, 2022. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) ·SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
After years of getting relatively little attention, consumer issues began to take on a new urgency in Washington after the 2008 financial crisis. The subprime lending meltdown led Congress to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, empowering it to police predatory practices by banks and other institutions such as payday lenders.
Biden pushed that evolution further, in part by appointing aggressive young regulators to lead key agencies. They included Federal Trade Commission Director Lina Khan and CFPB head Rohit Chopra, well-known advocates of tough antitrust enforcement who viewed consumer protection as an important part of their agenda to limit the power of large corporations.
The president also put a political spotlight on consumer protection with a government-wide crusade against “junk fees” — a loose term for sneaky or unfair charges that companies like airlines, ticket vendors, and banks use to hide the true cost of their services.
Rhetorically, the issue served as a folksy way for an administration struggling with voter anger over inflation to show that it was taking cost of living concerns seriously. During his 2023 State of the Union, Biden asked Congress for legislation banning the nickel-and-dime charges, while memorably about resort fees for hotels that “aren’t even resorts.”
The call for a bill went nowhere, but agencies moved ahead with their own crackdown. The FTC barring businesses from charging “hidden” and “bogus” fees, while the CFPB put forward regulation and . The Department of Transportation issued rules requiring airlines to their fees for things like checked bags upfront, and on charges for seating parents and children together.
But junk fees have been just one part of the broader push on consumer regulations. The FTC finished a long-awaited regulation forcing car dealers to be more transparent with their prices, barring them from . A rule to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up single-handedly appeared to tank the stock of gym chain Planet Fitness. This month, regulations requiring airlines to offer automatic refunds on delayed and canceled flights , while the that would make switching banks and credit cards simpler.
All of this has signaled a return to a forceful style of consumer protection that last saw its heyday in the Carter era, according to consumer protection experts.
“We’ve gone back to the past. That is plainly true,” said Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, a former head of consumer protection at the FTC. Then, as now, the agency sought to use sweeping regulations to limit what it deemed unfair practices by businesses.
The agency largely abandoned that approach in the 1980s after its efforts to ban advertising aimed at children triggered a and lasting budget freeze. In the following decades, it shied away from issuing major new rules except in cases where it was given a greenlight through legislation, relying more on individual enforcement actions and orders to rein in bad behavior by industry.
Now, the pendulum has swung back, said University of Alabama Law Professor Luke Herrine. At the FTC in particular, Khan has invoked legal authority to issue regulations banning “unfair and deceptive” corporate behavior that had been left almost entirely dormant since the 1980s.
“The idea that a given way of doing business is fundamentally unfair and needs to be eliminated, and that you should do that with a combination of regulation and enforcement and business guidance, that’s now the normal way of doing business,” Herrine said.
What Harris might do
that Harris could try to replace Khan at the FTC, given her unpopularity with business executives who are close to the vice president’s campaign. The speculation has lingered in part because the candidate has refused to talk publicly or privately about who she would try to appoint in the next administration.
But there are reasons to think Harris would stick with Biden’s path on consumer issues. Her promises to ban price gouging and crack down on corporate landlords have featured heavily in her campaign ads, for instance. She has also proposed a plan to , and in June appeared with Chopra to announce a new rule that would ban agencies from including medical bills on .
What Trump might do
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at J.S. Dorton Arena, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Trump has dabbled with his own populist promises on consumer protection. Earlier in the campaign, he announced, for instance, that he would seek to , a promise that drew fast blowback from business-friendly conservatives. His running mate Sen. J.D. Vance has also signaled his support for Kahn, saying he agrees with her “on some issues.”
But Trump’s first term record has given consumer advocates ample reasons for concern. His first appointee to run the CFPB, future chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, was accused of attempting to dismantle the agency “brick by brick” from the inside as he snuffed out much of its enforcement work and instructed staff the agency worked for both industry and consumers, despite its name.
The former president also spent much of his four years in office touting “.” Conservative experts in and around Trump’s orbit have been arguing for . (Trump’s campaign declined a request to comment). His judicial appointees have also tended to rule against regulators, who’ve had their powers significantly curtailed by recent Supreme Court decisions.
If Trump does choose the deregulatory route, he’d have lots of tools at his disposal. Many of the Biden administration’s most high-profile new regulations, like the FTC’s junk fees rule, have yet to be finalized, or are being challenged in court like the CFPB’s credit card fee caps. Trump could choose to stop defending some in court, or neuter others with rewrites. He could also repeal them entirely with the help of Capitol Hill Republicans via the , which allows Congress and the president to scrap recently finalized regulations.
At least some of the pro-business groups that have tangled with the Biden administration over its consumer protection push are expecting Trump to take a more soft-touch approach — both for ideological and personal reasons.
As John Berlau, director of finance policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “If something has the Biden stamp on it, just from that alone there would be a tendency to reverse that.”
Jordan Weissmann is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance.
