They dont control FE pricing. Nvidia is taking a bath on the FE cards this year so they could advertise a low MSRP on the cards. This was explained prior to launch by some youtubers but people are just catching on. FE this year is high end PCB and high end cooler at reference pricing.
Basically, FE competes with the top AIB cards but at lower cost, if you can get a FE do it.