Biden claims to be building out an economy “bottom up, middle out.”

Joe Biden didn’t take a Juneteenth break, instead heading to Palo Alto to tout “historic action to combat the climate crisis, create good-paying clean energy jobs, and protect our environment for future generations.”

Biden frequently claims to be building out an economy “bottom up, middle out.” But the impulses on display in California entail more central government. His springboards for these ambitious extensions of Washington’s top-down power include the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure, inflation and tech laws he takes credit for, plus his conviction that climate change is “the existential threat to humanity.”

But there’s more. Recently we showcased examples of this administration’s fondness—not just for ambitious legislation and revivals of big-gun regulation like a clean air plan and energy efficiency rules—but for sub-regulatory guidance documents. Recent examples of these decrees come from the likes of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Transportation and encompass competition policy, climate, environmental justice and more.

These transformations are getting interesting in real time. Some companies are learning the hard way that to get funding from Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Law, they’ll need to jump through hoops such as providing child care services, committing to green energy sourcing, and even potentially agreeing to profit-sharing with the federal government.

Strings attached to government funding ought not to have surprised the grownups. The Biden administration has been anything but coy about its aggressive policy campaigns.

In spreading the cash, Biden says he “is not handing out blank checks to companies.” In normal settings, that’s the right sentiment. But here we have a quid pro quo that grows presidential “pen-and-phone, go-it-alone” power.

“We’ll make sure that companies partner with unions, community colleges, technical schools, and offer training and apprenticeships,” Biden recently declared. “We’re going to make sure … small and minority-owned businesses get to participate. … Because in [the CHIPS and Scence Act] I have the power to take back any federal funding from these companies if they don’t meet these requirements.” Other strictures expanding government authority include “Made in America” covenants that can also aggravate trade war with U.S. allies. All these can increase consumer prices.

The Infrastructure Law’s “renewables” provisions are already picking winners in commercial-scale battery production for electric vehicles, but with those aforementioned strings attached. In October 2022 for example, Biden boasted of billions of federal dollars earmarked to 20 companies (selected from 200 that applied) across 12 states.

And sure enough, to “win,” applicants were asked how they would commit to “partner with labor unions, community colleges, minority-serving institutions, labor unions and local organizations to provide job training.” As Biden remarked of certain Infrastructure Law projects in January 2023, “All of it is union labor. All of it. Every freaking one, union labor. You all thing I’m kidding? I’m not.” Meanwhile, tighter definitions of “prevailing” wages for mandatory union labor will mean even higher costs passed onto consumers

Federal high-tech pork that should not be handed out in the first place is being dispensed, not based purely on merit and ace business plans, but on adherence to progressive political causes and conformity with misguided executive branch ambitions.

Instead of protecting the future of the economy, jobs and Americans’ financial security, Biden’s policies flexing the power of the federal government will undermine prosperity and abundance as the ribbon-cuttings fade in the rear-view mirror.

But there’s still more. In its fervor the White House is also targeting credit card late fees, bank overdraft fees, hotel and airline charges, and prescription drug prices it dislikes, deeming them “junk fees” and constructing new regulatory and guidance schemes to “fix” them. Consumers themselves are already, every day, doing fine navigating the confusion and deciding for themselves what to pay or circumvent. But ironically, the sectors typically derided for opaque pricing practices are already among the most heavily regulated quarters of the economy.

Biden’s appetite for economic micromanagement can have its most detrimental impact on the poor—the very folks it’s ostensibly aimed at helping. Vigorous capitalism, not these new laws and subsidies, is necessary to deliver opportunity, abundance and reasonably priced products and services. Instead, Biden rolled back even the limited regulatory streamlining Trump had begun.

The “Offices of Environmental Justice” and “equity” sprouting throughout Biden’s administration, to be worthy of such names, should be pleading the case for free enterprise and blueprinting how to reduce red tape. Nothing is more unfair than pointless and counterproductive regulation and sub-regulatory guidance schemes that make it harder to do business for all but the most well-positioned.

And despite the aggravations, the well-positioned are going to do great in this era.

After all, top-down policies—not bottom-up, middle-out ones—are what the nation is getting.