 In the United States the Robinson-Patman Act (1936), which prevents sellers of commodities in interstate commerce from discriminating in price between purchasers of goods of like grade and quality, was designed to prevent vertically integrated trusts from driving smaller competitors out of the market through economies of scale.It was not until 1941, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in employment by a company working under a government defense contract, that economic discrimination took on the overtones it has today, which is discrimination against minorities.By 1960, anti-trust laws and interstate commerce laws had effectively regulated inter-corporate discrimination so problematic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the problem of discrimination on an economic basis against minorities had become widespread.