During Joe Biden’s presidency, federal regulators have orchestrated a sweeping consumer protection campaign not seen since the 1970s.

The administration has declared war on so-called junk fees, tangled with car dealerships and credit card companies, and attacked everyday headaches that plague shoppers, like fake online reviews and subscriptions that are difficult to cancel. Along the way, watchdogs dusted off legal authorities that had gone mostly unused for decades to try to impose tough new rules on the industry.

Supporters say how Tuesday’s election plays out will likely determine whether that recovery continues or is halted. Although both candidates have left key questions about policy and personnel unanswered, some consumer groups say they expect Vice President Kamala Harris to continue much of Biden’s approach, while former President Donald Trump would bring a law enforcement rollback similar to that of his first term.

“The contrast between Harris and Trump on these issues couldn’t be clearer,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “One defends the fight for consumers and the other for the richest among us.”

Learn more: What are unwanted fees and how can you avoid them?

Biden’s record

After receiving relatively little attention for years, consumer issues began to take on new urgency in Washington after the 2008 financial crisis. The collapse of subprime lending led Congress to create the Financial Protection Bureau consumers, allowing it to control the predatory practices of banks and other institutions such as payday lenders.

Biden has taken this development further, in part by appointing aggressive young regulators to lead key agencies. Among them were Federal Trade Commission Director Lina Khan and CFPB Chairman Rohit Chopra, well-known advocates of strong antitrust enforcement who saw consumer protection as an important part of their agenda to limit the power of big business.

The president has also placed a policy emphasis on consumer protection with a government-wide crusade against “junk fees” — a vague term for sneaky or unfair charges that companies like airlines, sellers of Banknotes and banks use to hide the true cost of their services.

Rhetorically, the question served as a popular way for an administration grappling with voter anger over inflation to show that it was taking cost-of-living concerns seriously. During his 2023 State of the Union address, Biden asked Congress for legislation banning nickel and dime charges, while being memorable moan on resort fees for hotels that “aren’t even resorts.”

The call for a bill came to nothing, but agencies continued their own crackdown. The FTC proposed a general rule Ban companies from charging ‘hidden’ and ‘fake’ fees, while CFPB proposes regulation limit late fees on credit cards to just $8 And limit bank overdraft fees. The Department of Transportation has issued rules requiring airlines to disclose their fees for things like pre-checked bags and proposed a ban on the costs associated with placing parents and children together.

But unnecessary fees are only part of broader efforts to regulate consumers. The FTC has finalized a long-awaited rule requiring auto dealers to be more transparent about their prices, prohibiting them from sell unnecessary add-ons. A rule demanding of companies making it as easy to cancel memberships as it is to sign up alone seemed to fuel the stock of gym chain Planet Fitness. This month, regulations require airlines to offer automatic refunds on delayed and canceled flights came into forcewhile the CFPB Proposes Regulation this would simplify changing banks and credit cards.

It all marks a return to an energetic style of consumer protection that peaked during the Carter era, consumer protection experts say.

“We went back to the past. That’s absolutely true,” said David Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and former consumer protection official at the FTC. Then as now, the agency sought to use sweeping regulations to limit what it saw as unfair practices by businesses.

The agency largely abandoned this approach in the 1980s after its efforts to ban advertising aimed at children sparked a violent reaction from Congress and a lasting budget freeze. In subsequent decades, it refrained from issuing major new rules except in cases where it was given the green light through legislation, relying more on individual enforcement actions and orders to curb bad behavior in the industry.

Today, the pendulum has swung back, said Luke Herrine, a law professor at the University of Alabama. At the FTC in particular, Khan invoked legal authority to issue regulations prohibiting “unfair and deceptive” corporate behavior that had remained almost entirely dormant since the 1980s.

“The idea that a particular way of doing business is fundamentally unfair and needs to be eliminated and that it needs to be done through a combination of regulation, enforcement and business focus, is now the normal way of doing business,” he said. declared Herrine.

Learn more: How to Protect Your Credit Card Rewards as the CFPB Responds to a Rise in Customer Complaints

What Harris Could Do

Some progressives worried that Harris could attempt to replace Khan at the FTC, given his unpopularity with business executives close to the vice president’s campaign. Speculation persists in part because the candidate has refused to speak publicly or privately about who she would seek to appoint to the next administration.

But there is reason to think Harris would follow Biden’s lead on consumer issues. For example, his promises to ban price gouging and crack down on business owners were heavily promoted in his campaign ads. She also proposed a plan to forgive Americans’ medical debtsand in June appeared with Chopra to announce a new rule that would prohibit agencies from including medical bills on credit reports.

What Trump could do

Trump touched on his own populist consumer protection promises. Earlier in the campaign, he announced, for example, that he would seek to temporarily cap credit card interest rates at 10%a promise that quickly drew backlash from pro-business conservatives. Her running mate and Ohio senator JD Vance also expressed support for Khan, saying he agreed with her “on some issues.”

But Trump’s record during the first term has given consumer advocates plenty of reason to worry. Its first appointee to head the CFPB, future chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, was accused of trying to dismantle the agency “brick by brick” from the inside as he eliminated much of its work. application and instructed staff that the agency worked for both industry and consumers, despite its name.

The former president also spent much of his four years in office touting “historical deregulation.” Conservative pundits in and around Trump’s orbit have argued for more setbacks on the rules for Wall Street. (The Trump campaign declined a request for comment). Its appointed judges have also tended to rule against regulators, whose powers have been significantly curtailed by recent Supreme Court decisions.

If Trump chooses the path of deregulation, he will have many tools at his disposal. Many of the Biden administration’s highest-profile new regulations, like the FTC’s junk fee rule, have not yet been 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 neutralize others by rewriting. He could also repeal them entirely with the help of Republicans on Capitol Hill via the Congressional Review Actwhich allows Congress and the President to abandon recently finalized regulations.

At least some of the pro-business groups that have clashed with the Biden administration over its consumer protection efforts expect Trump to take a softer approach — both for ideological and personal reasons .

As John Berlau, director of financial policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, puts it: “If something has Biden’s stamp on it, just from that, there would be a trend to reverse the trend.” »

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the first name for Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert.We regret the error.

Jordan Weissmann is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance.

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