Joe Biden’s biggest supporters insist he is the most progressive US president since his reforming predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Now Biden is trying to place himself in a tradition that includes not only FDR but also his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, the “trust buster” who instigated the break-up of Standard Oil in 1906, as he embarks on what the White House says will be a generational shift in US competition policy.

Biden’s backers say that the 72 actions in the presidential order signed on Friday — encompassing everything from airline ticketing policies to the importation of cheaper prescription drugs — constitute one of the most dramatic challenges to the power of large corporations since either Roosevelt.

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Sarah Miller, the executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said: “This order . . . breaks from 40 years of consensus about how the government should interact with corporations.

“It is all the more substantial because it was Joe Biden, and not one of the Democrats we think of as part of the progressive wing, who signed it.”