Since the Federal Reserve continues to work on curbing inflation, the White House is attacking the high prices stretching Americans’ budgets in a single other way: with a contemporary “strike force.”

President Joe Biden announced the interagency effort, formally called the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, on Tuesday. Based on a fact sheet, its mission is to “root out and stop illegal corporate behavior that hikes prices on American families through anti-competitive, unfair, deceptive or fraudulent business practices.”

The ultimate word goal? Billions in savings on junk fees, plus lower prices on frequently goods like gas and groceries.

The duty force will probably be led by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission — which Jared Bernstein, chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, tells Money is noteworthy for the reason that agencies have the “legal wherewithal to go after illegal pricing behaviors.” With fewer silos and more data-sharing between departments, the hope is that the duty force will probably be higher ready to crack down on wrongdoing.

“There could also be more happening inside the space than we now have been ready to dam thus far, and so we are going to ramp up our efforts,” Bernstein says.

How competition drives down prices

Biden has made competition a key an element of his economic agenda recently. Last yr, for instance, the administration sued to dam a merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines (the firms announced this week that their plans had been called off). Last month, the FTC moved to stop grocery giant Kroger from acquiring Albertson’s.

“When corporations compete to your enterprise, they typically are inclined to lower costs and improve quality,” Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, tells Money. “We have now seen historically, when there’s more competition, consumers get a greater deal.”

Brainard says the supply chains were broken by the pandemic when Biden took office, and the situation was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These pressures, combined with consumers’ pent-up demand, led inflation to spike.

But this has since abated.

Though it stays above the Fed’s long-run goal of two%, inflation has fallen from its June 2022 peak of 9.1%. As of January, the customer price index was up 3.1% yr over yr.

“Supply chains in the mean time are back to normal, and a number of costs for businesses are also down,” Brainard adds. “But some corporations are often not passing savings on to consumers.”

Affording day-to-day spending stays top of mind for a number of Americans: In poll results released Tuesday by personal finance company Achieve, 66% of respondents said “making ends meet” was one among their top financial concerns which will thoroughly be affected by the upcoming presidential election.

These themes — of competition, affordability and fair pricing — are expected to be an element of Biden’s Thursday State of the Union address, but not everyone agrees with the administration’s approach. The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board pushed back against the White House’s strike-force reveal, writing that the administration should instead consider “rolling back burdensome government regulation that’s raising prices.”

For example, the board highlighted a latest rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau intended to slash bank card late fees, which — along with its overdraft-fee crackdown — the board said “will reduce the supply of free checking.”

For its part, the CFPB has estimated the rule will save Americans $10 billion a yr.

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