In summer 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on "Promoting Competition in the American Economy." A White House fact sheet declared that the economy was "booming under President Biden's leadership," saying the order was "building on this economic momentum" by pushing back against corporate consolidation, primarily through aggressive antitrust enforcement.
A little more than a year later, the economy was flailing. Myriad economists and business leaders warned that the country was on the brink of a recession. Biden's antitrust effort was not performing much better. In late 2022, the government suffered a string of losses in high-profile antitrust cases. Its biggest antitrust victory, meanwhile, demonstrated the strategy's underlying futility.