Issues

CEI Original Content

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

Advancing Capitalism

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

Regulatory Reform

Constitutional and Legal Issues

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.

Finance and Entrepreneurship

Trade and International

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.

Immigration

The legally unencumbered movement of people across borders reaps huge net economic benefits for all parties concerned. Congress should enhance the benefits of immigration by implementing less restrictive immigration laws with the ultimate goal of an immigration system that lets non-criminal, non-terrorist, and healthy immigrants from anywhere in the world move to the United States. Our restrictive and economically devastating immigration regulations and laws should be refocused entirely on protecting the safety, security, and private property of Americans by excluding criminals, terrorists, and immigrants with deadly transmittable diseases. Instead of being a tool of economic protectionism, as our immigration restrictions currently are, they should be transformed in to a tool for economic growth.

Insurance

Insurance, when prices are based on risk, sends clear signals about the relative safety of behaviors and can alter consumer choice for a safer and more stable society. But when certain parties seek protectionist policies to socialize risk, responsible people end up paying for the risky choices of others.

Nanny State

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 and 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.

Energy and Environment

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.

Health and 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

In the United States, the rise of automobility had a profound impact on economic opportunity and prosperity, particularly among historically disadvantaged groups such as women and minorities. Yet automobility, air travel and freight rail are increasingly threatened with further regulation that will reduce their ability to transport goods and people. CEI opposes these attacks by arguing for greater freedom in automobility and opposing perverse transport industry regulations.

Labor