#Biden’s anti-competitive ‘competition’ order

Not content with record inflation sparked by his added trillions in spending and stubborn unemployment rolls thanks to his extended benefits, President Joe Biden has delivered more economic poison by issuing a sweeping executive order that claims to be “a whole-of-government effort to promote competition in the American economy” when it’s really just more bad medicine for the private sector.

His everything-but-the-kitchen-sink directive is simply a compendium of longtime Democratic dreams, banning companies — and workers — from acting in ways that keep them competitive.

The order includes 72 directives for more than a dozen federal agencies on everything from prescription-drug prices to Internet services to chicken farming.

The White House claims this “historic” action will build on the “economic momentum” Biden’s created to “lower prices for families, increase wages for workers, and promote innovation and even faster economic growth.”

Um: Prices are rising, and fast — eating into whatever wage growth is coming as the economy bounces back from COVID. And this order could do serious damage to that recovery.

One example of the fakery here: Biden says he’ll ban or limit employers’ use of non-compete agreements, which he says “are done for one reason: to keep wages low,” citing how they keep McDonald’s workers from accepting better-paid jobs at Burger King and asking, “Is there a trade secret about what’s in that patty?”

Reporters laughed but missed the big lie: Mickey D’s has no such thing. After Biden said the same thing last year on the campaign trail, even the left-leaning PolitiFact noted “his tough words about the fast food giant got nearly every detail wrong.”

In fact, non-competes are typically something high-end workers sign to increase their salaries, offering employers security in exchange for more cash.

More bull: Biden said he’s ordered the Food and Drug Administration “to help expedite imports of prescription drugs from Canada” because “high prices are in part the result of lack of competition among drug manufacturers.”

No, drugs are cheaper in Canada because of price controls. Americans pay more to subsidize the high cost of R&D that other countries shirk. The race to develop COVID vaccines in record time showed how competitive drugmakers really are.

Other items on the long lefty wish list include promoting “net neutrality,” directing the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to “challenge prior bad mergers” OK’d by past administrations, forcing freight railroad-track owners to give rights of way to passenger rail and “banning excessive early termination fees” by Internet providers.

Most of it is bad ideas, and little of it has to do with boosting competition except according to lefty talking points. Is there anyone in this White House who has a clue how the private sector actually works?