But junk fees have been just one part of the broader push on consumer regulations. The FTC finished a long-awaited regulation forcing car dealers to be more transparent with their prices, barring them from selling unnecessary add-ons. A rule requiring companies to make it as easy to cancel subscriptions as it is to sign up single-handedly appeared to tank the stock of gym chain Planet Fitness. This month, regulations requiring airlines to offer automatic refunds on delayed and canceled flights went into effect, while the CFPB put forward a regulation that would make switching banks and credit cards simpler.

All of this has signaled a return to a forceful style of consumer protection that last saw its heyday in the Carter era, according to consumer protection experts.

“We’ve gone back to the past. That is plainly true,” said Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, a former head of consumer protection at the FTC. Then, as now, the agency sought to use sweeping regulations to limit what it deemed unfair practices by businesses.

The agency largely abandoned that approach in the 1980s after its efforts to ban advertising aimed at children triggered a fierce congressional backlash and lasting budget freeze. In the following decades, it shied away from issuing major new rules except in cases where it was given a greenlight through legislation, relying more on individual enforcement actions and orders to rein in bad behavior by industry.

Now, the pendulum has swung back, said University of Alabama Law Professor Luke Herrine. At the FTC in particular, Khan has invoked legal authority to issue regulations banning “unfair and deceptive” corporate behavior that had been left almost entirely dormant since the 1980s.

“The idea that a given way of doing business is fundamentally unfair and needs to be eliminated, and that you should do that with a combination of regulation and enforcement and business guidance, that’s now the normal way of doing business,” Herrine said.

What Harris might do

Some progressives have worried that Harris could try to replace Khan at the FTC, given her unpopularity with business executives who are close to the vice president’s campaign. The speculation has lingered in part because the candidate has refused to talk publicly or privately about who she would try to appoint in the next administration.

But there are reasons to think Harris would stick with Biden’s path on consumer issues. Her promises to ban price gouging and crack down on corporate landlords have featured heavily in her campaign ads, for instance. She has also proposed a plan to forgive Americans’ medical debts, and in June appeared with Chopra to announce a new rule that would ban agencies from including medical bills on credit reports.

What Trump might do

Trump has dabbled with his own populist promises on consumer protection. Earlier in the campaign, he announced, for instance, that he would seek to temporarily cap credit card interest rates at 10%, a promise that drew fast blowback from business-friendly conservatives. His running mate Sen. J.D. Vance has also signaled his support for Kahn, saying he agrees with her “on some issues.”

But Trump’s first term record has given consumer advocates ample reasons for concern. His first appointee to run the CFPB, future chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, was accused of attempting to dismantle the agency “brick by brick” from the inside as he snuffed out much of its enforcement work and instructed staff the agency worked for both industry and consumers, despite its name.

The former president also spent much of his four years in office touting “historic deregulation.” Conservative experts in and around Trump’s orbit have been arguing for more rollbacks on rules for Wall Street. (Trump’s campaign declined a request to comment). His judicial appointees have also tended to rule against regulators, who’ve had their powers significantly curtailed by recent Supreme Court decisions.

If Trump does choose the deregulatory route, he’d have lots of tools at his disposal. Many of the Biden administration’s most high-profile new regulations, like the FTC’s junk fees rule, have yet to be 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 neuter others with rewrites. He could also repeal them entirely with the help of Capitol Hill Republicans via the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress and the president to scrap recently finalized regulations.

At least some of the pro-business groups that have tangled with the Biden administration over its consumer protection push are expecting Trump to take a more soft-touch approach — both for ideological and personal reasons.

As John Berlau, director of finance policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “If something has the Biden stamp on it, just from that alone there would be a tendency to reverse that.”

Jordan Weissmann is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance.