Biden to Sign Executive Order Granting Farmers Right to Repair Protections
President Biden is preparing to issue an executive order on the right to repair, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. This would be the first time a president has weighed in on the ability for consumers to fix their own things; it would also be the first time that a president has taken concrete steps on the issue.
At the White House press briefing today , Psaki said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal Trade Commission, at the direction of Biden, is working on new rules to increase competition in the farming industry, allow for greater competition between small farmers and big businesses, and “give farmers the right to repair their own equipment how they like.” Psaki said this would be part of an executive order that the Biden administration will sign that is focused more broadly on helping farmers. Bloomberg reported the news earlier Tuesday.
Broadly speaking, the right to repair is a set of policies that would make it easier for consumers, farmers, and small businesses to fix the things they own. Over the last few decades, big companies have formed repair monopolies by artificially locking “unauthorized” people out of their own machines through the use of software locks, the use of proprietary parts which are only sold to dealers or authorized repair companies, onerous end-user license agreements, and copyright law. Small businesses, consumers, and activists have been pushing for state-level legislation that would make it easier for the average person to fix their things by requiring companies to sell repair parts and tools to the general public, make internal repair guides public, and ban software locks that prevent repair. No state has passed this legislation yet, but the New York state Senate passed a bill earlier this year (the bill has not yet passed the state Assembly and thus has not become law).
