Issues

CEI Original Content

CEI's originally produced content analyzing the important issues of the day.

Economic Regulation

Over-regulation costs the economy more than $1.2 trillion per year. CEI’s research focuses on how to reduce that burden.

Entrepreneurship

Globalization & Trade

In today’s world, goods, services, capital and people move across most national borders and are much more closely integrated in the global economy. Increased world trade has been one engine behind the dramatic increase in global prosperity since the 1950s. However, trade liberalization is increasingly threatened by special interests seeking to protect their domestic industries from increased competition.

Insurance

When insurers are free to charge risk-based rates, premium prices send clear signals about the safety or danger of certain behaviors and can positively alter consumer choices for a safer and more stable society. But a number of politically connected and motivated parties seek to impose protectionist policies that socialize risk and responsibility—namely, responsible people end up paying for the risky choices of others.

Nanny State Regulation

The growth of the nanny state has been unprecedented in recent years as myriad, seemingly minor regulations—ranging from beverage taxes and bake-sale bans to plastic bag taxes and bans—have together come to have large impact on our freedoms. The result isn’t a safer, more secure world as government advocates suggest; it’s a poorer, less fair one with diminished freedom. CEI’s nanny state project pushes back on these trends by highlighting the impacts of these regulations and advancing policies to reverse them.

Tech & Telecom

America’s thriving technology and telecom sectors are not immune from government regulation. From the Federal Communications Commission to the Department of Justice, many high-tech firms face varying degrees of regulatory intervention.

Constitution & Legal

Government regulations are based on laws, and those laws in turn rest on the limited powers granted to government by the Constitution. Whether these constitutional limits succeed in actually reining in government is one of the basic issues facing our country.

Energy

CEI's largest program takes on all the hard energy and climate issues. CEI questions global warming alarmism, makes the case for access to affordable energy, and opposes energy-rationing policies, including the Kyoto Protocol, cap-and-trade legislation, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. CEI also opposes all government mandates and subsidies for conventional and alternative energy technologies.

Environment

Many environmental groups argue that profit motives and private interests are essentially at odds with environmental protection. However, CEI’s research shows that private stewardship and free markets benefit environmental quality. These factors have ensured a growing resource base in America, despite claims to the contrary.

Health & Safety

From foods and agriculture, to pharmaceuticals and medical care, to consumer products and automobile safety, few policy issues are as important to the public as the regulation of health and safety. People often rely on government regulators to assure the safety and quality of many of the products they use and consume, but government regulation can often compromise safety, quality, affordability, and choice if it focuses on a fear-driven activist agenda rather than basic principles of science and risk-balancing. Too often, the government’s regulatory agenda favors politically expedient outcomes over those that would actually promote safety and availability. Safety and health regulations should be designed with maximum flexibility to allow producers to use the production methods and labeling information that best meets their customers’ demands.

Transportation

Automobility—the ability to transport yourself somewhere quickly—is one of the great enablers of freedom. There has been no better illustration of this than in the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott during the civil rights era. Yet automobility is under increasing attack—from environmentalists, “smart growth” advocates, and meddling bureaucrats. Other forms of transportation such as airlines and freight railroads are increasingly threatened with reregulation, ignoring the lessons of the ruinous effects of regulation learned at great cost in previous eras. CEI opposes these attacks by arguing for greater freedom in automobility and opposing perverse transportation industry regulations