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The 2021 Edition of Ten Thousand Commandments Is Out Now
How much does regulation cost? It’s hard to tell, due to a lack of transparency. The government is legally required to tell the public how…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Negotiators reached a deal on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, at least for now. There were also marathon committee markup sessions for five antitrust bills. Meanwhile,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Members of Congress introduced five antitrust bills last week. Antitrust activist Lina Khan was confirmed to a seat on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and…
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A Better Approach to Tariff Diplomacy
In diplomacy, carrots tend to be more effective than sticks. Yet, two consecutive administrations have used tariff threats to try to achieve their objectives. Former…
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Boeing-Airbus Dispute Remains Unsolved: Tariffs Gone, Subsidies Stay
The European Union and the United States eagerly announced today that they had resolved their 17-year dispute over aerospace subsidies. They exaggerate their claims.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economic recovery continues, but Congress is still intent on passing unneeded stimulus and infrastructure spending. Inflation is also up, and five antitrust bills are…
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CPI Inflation Indicator Hits 5 Percent: Not Stagflation, But a Useful Warning
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for May came out this morning. At 5 percent, it was higher than expected. CPI has its flaws…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Unemployment is back under 6 percent, and it’s looking more and more like the economy is reverting back to trend. We’re not there yet, but…
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Steel Companies Lobby for Steel Tariffs, Biden to Double Lumber Tariffs
One of the first things President Biden should have done upon taking office was to eliminate the Trump tariffs. This would have provided potent economic…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI’s Wayne Crews looked at the Biden administration’s dismantling transparency reforms for guidance documents and warned that political spending on scientific research would…
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Microsoft to Retire Internet Explorer: Lessons for Today’s Antitrust Cases
Microsoft just announced it will retire its Internet Explorer browser next year. This is the same program that was at the heart of an…
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What Inflation Is, and What It Isn’t
It looks like we’re in for a bit of inflation. After decades of stable 2 percent inflation, the latest indicators say it’s moving up…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The best news of the week was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising that vaccinated people can safely go mask-free pretty much anywhere.
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One of Google’s Antitrust Cases Dismissed, for Now
A District judge on Thursday dismissed a private antitrust case against Google brought by a group of advertisers. It does not affect separate cases…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Facebook Oversight Board conditionally upheld former President Trump’s Facebook ban. Many Republican responses showed that they either do not understand the First Amendment or…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The economy bounced back in a big way, according to numbers released on Thursday. Things are not quite back where they were, but the trend…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news of the week was the guilty verdicts in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. Senate Republicans continued their longtime strategy of bargaining with…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress played a round of good idea-bad idea last week. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) introduced a bill for a regulatory budget, similar to the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen floated the idea of a global minimum corporate tax and Amazon workers in Alabama voted against unionizing. The Biden…
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Who Pays Corporate Taxes?
Congress is considering increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to help pay for the big infrastructure bill it is currently…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Washington’s attention flitted back and forth between beginning work on a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and a brewing sex scandal allegedly involving Rep. Matt Gaetz and…
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U.S. Trade Representative Tai Should Rethink Keeping China Tariffs in Place
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Katherine Tai, the new United States Trade Representative. She has a lot of work ahead of her…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A massive container ship turned sideways and blocked the Suez canal, halting roughly $10 billion worth of international trade per day, or about $400…
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Putting a Price on Conspiracy Theories, Revisited
Conspiracy theories are back in the news, so it’s a good time to revisit my recent Fortune article about putting prices on conspiracy theories.
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Restoring Separation of Powers and Improving Resilience with the USA Act
Separation of powers is a core principle of American government. But things haven’t gone quite as planned. Congress, the first branch, has increasingly taken a…
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Book Review: Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg
On March 25, 2021 at noon ET, CEI is hosting a double book forum featuring Johan Norberg, the 2019 winner of CEI’s Julian L. Simon…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI published its new Agenda for Congress. We also held a launch event featuring Sen. Rand Paul. Meanwhile, the 2021 Federal Register surpassed…
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Agenda for Congress: Regulatory Reform
CEI’s new agenda for Congress is out now. If you’re interested only in certain issues, individual chapters are downloadable here. We also hosted…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress passed a $1.9 trillion spending bill, some of which may actually be COVID-related. Agencies issued new rules ranging from eastern hellbenders to reentry licenses.
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Why Facebook’s Antitrust Cases Should Be Dropped
Facebook filed today to dismiss antitrust lawsuits against it today by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and several state attorneys general. One of the…