The White House on Wednesday expanded its war on “unreasonable taxes” in the rental market, announced a crackdown on price fixing in food and agricultural markets and unveiled a merger bill as part of an ongoing effort to help American consumers, Reuters reported. .

President Joe Biden, who has made attacking corporate greed and power a central theme of his presidency, explained the administration’s latest actions at the agency’s fifth meeting of the 18-member Competition Council at the White House on Wednesday. .

“This is about basic fairness,” he told cabinet members and other council members, stressing the need to keep inflation down. “People are tired of being taken for granted.”

The new measures came ahead of the second anniversary of Biden’s executive order creating the council and a government-wide crackdown on anti-competitive practices. He has already targeted taxes on meat, transportation and garbage.

The White House said four decades of “flawed economic philosophy” had led to increased concentration in three-quarters of American industry, costing the average US household up to $5,000 a year in higher prices and lower wages.

“We cannot accept bad mergers that lead to mass layoffs, higher prices, and fewer choices for workers and consumers,” Biden said. “I’ve said it before, capitalism without competition is not capitalism. This is exploitation.”

Hannah Garden Monheit, the new policy director of the National Economic Council’s Competition Council, told Reuters the administration would use all the tools at its disposal to crack down on anti-competitive practices.

Biden said the three largest rental housing platforms — Zillow, Apartments.com and AffordableHousing.com — agreed to release aggregated preliminary data on rental costs, such as listing fees, which can be as high as $100 or more per application, and “convenience fees” that are sometimes charged for online rent or trash collection.

A senior official said the move would not in itself reduce fees, but increased transparency should reduce them by giving tens of millions of renters a chance to compare.

Biden has repeatedly called on federal agencies, Congress and private companies to consider the surprise fees, which could increase costs for consumers by 20 percent. Three major airlines have already agreed to waive fees for children staying with their parents.