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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In a pre-recess Parthian shot, the Senate passed a massive new spending bill that would increase federal spending by $320 billion over two years and…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress has adjourned for its August recess, so the republic is safe for another month. Rulemaking agencies are still on the job, however, and published…
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House Passes ‘Raise the Wage’ Act
The Raise the Wage Act, which passed the House on Thursday, would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025. The bill now moves…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Washington, D.C.’s flash flood was followed up by a heat wave; this week could bring even worse during Congress’ final week in session before the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Washington, D.C. was hit by a flash flood, but agencies were still able to publish new regulations ranging from electric program procedures to Fort Ord…
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Antitrust Basics: Regulatory Uncertainty
Antitrust laws are not enforced to the letter. They are a matter of regulators’ and judges’ discretion. If they were applied literally, every business transaction…
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Antitrust Basics: Rule of Reason Standard vs. Consumer Welfare Standard
Regulators have used two different standards to judge antitrust cases over the last century or so: the “rules of reason” standard and the “consumer welfare”…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a four-day week for the federal government as the nation celebrated Independence Day. Meanwhile, agencies published new regulations ranging from the Paper and…
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Antitrust Basics: Misleading Herfindahl-Hirschman Index
Market concentration is the most common reason for antitrust intervention. If a company has too large a market share, it can abuse that market power…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2019 Federal Register broke 30,000 pages last week, the Democratic presidential candidates had their first debates, and the U.S. and Chinese governments prepared for…
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Antitrust Basics: Relevant Market Fallacy
If a firm is charged with having market power, the question naturally arises: in which market? Does Facebook have a monopoly over social networking, especially…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Wednesday, the day before the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 35th anniversary gala dinner, saw no new final regulations published in the Federal Register. This may be…
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Introducing Antitrust Basics
Often, a drips-and-drabs approach to learning an issue over a period of time is as effective as a single intense cram session. To that end,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Last week, a Canadian team won the NBA championship for the first time, while an American team won the Stanley Cup. This week brings us…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
While the administration is so far keeping to its one-in, two-out policy for proposed rules, new trade and antitrust policies are likely to increase net…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump threatened a new tariff on all Mexican goods, potentially scuttling the NAFTA/USMCA agreement. My colleague Wayne Crews went through the new Spring 2019…
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Addressing the Gender Pay Gap: Culture, Not Legislation
Gender discrimination is a complex problem with a complex solution.
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Trump Threatens up to 25 Percent Tariff on Mexican Goods, Jeopardizes NAFTA/USMCA
Things have been moving quickly on President Trump’s top legislative priority, the NAFTA/USMCA trade agreement. The key was rescinding steel and aluminum tariffs against Canada…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations this year topped 1,000 last Tuesday, and President Trump and Congress entered Memorial Day weekend at odds on issues…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Game of Thrones finale aired last night, though the show’s less-plausible Washington spinoff appears set to continue indefinitely, and with a rather larger budget.
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Trump Mostly Removes Steel, Aluminum Tariffs against Mexico, Canada: Barriers Still Higher than in 2017
The Trump administration is mostly lifting its steel aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico, effective 48 hours from today’s announcement. But metal tariffs will remain higher…
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Alice Rivlin, 1931-2019
Some economists do more than teach classes and write books. Alice Rivlin, who passed away this week, was proof. She was the first director of…
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Boeing Pushes 100 Percent Tariffs on Airbus
Boeing, fresh off a victory in restoring the Export-Import Bank’s full lending authority, is floating the idea of a 100 percent tariff on Airbus aircraft…
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Trade War State of Play: China, USMCA
If President Trump’s trade war has a single takeaway, it is this: Raising tariffs is an ineffective bargaining strategy. When the U.S. raises its tariffs,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called for breaking up the company; CEI’s Iain Murray and Kent Lassman explain why that’s a bad idea. CEI also released…
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Re-Prioritizing Regulatory Reform
The 2019 edition of Wayne Crews’ Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State is out now.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Not one, but two potential Federal Reserve Board nominees withdrew from consideration last week, and economic growth and unemployment remained in excellent health. Meanwhile, with…
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Trump Threatens New China Tariff with May 10th Deadline
On Sunday, President Trump announced via Twitter that if he does not approve of the results of this week’s U.S.-China trade talks, he will enact…
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Ex-Im Bank Revival?
Next week the Senate is expected to vote on new board members for the Export-Import Bank, which gives favorable financing terms to foreign governments and…
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Republican Study Committee Releases 2020 Budget Proposal
Congress is supposed to pass an annual spending budget, though it rarely gets around to it. Instead, the government is usually funded through a mashup…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
While Washington’s “This Town” types geared up for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the rest of the country flocked to movie theaters for a much…
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Antitrust Regulation Turning into Campaign Issue
Both parties are making antitrust regulation a 2020 campaign issue. Neither President Trump nor most of the Democratic candidates are proposing improvements. Over at the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire and sustained heavy damage. The rebuilding will likely take years, though people began politicizing it almost instantly.
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Blocking the T-Mobile-Sprint Merger: Competition, Rent-Seeking, and Uncertainty
Nationwide 5G networks are coming. They will expand possibilities for everything from smartphone applications to GPS to streaming video, and will enable new technologies that…
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New Study: The Case against Antitrust Law
Antitrust regulation is a complex, multifaceted issue. It brings together insights from law, economics, political science, history, philosophy, and other disciplines. Right now both political…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In a remarkable human achievement, scientists took the first-ever image of a black hole. The effort took eight telescopes on five continents, five petabytes of…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The news cycle was more sizzle than steak last week. President Trump threatened to shut down the southern border and backed off almost immediately, so…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Pundits spent the week engaging in mortal combat over the Mueller Report, which none of them have read, and spring officially sprung with baseball’s opening…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As tempers flared over how many “chuggas” to say before “choo-choo,” the 2019 Federal Register topped the 10,000-page mark last week and the number of…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump has declared passing the new NAFTA/USMCA as his top legislative priority, but congressional ratification will not be automatic. Mexico and Canada are also…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Last week was low-drama by recent standards, but still had some important developments. The U.S. trade deficit set a record for the second year in…
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What Do Economists Think about the Minimum Wage?
The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said that if you laid all the world’s economists end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. President…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Michael Cohen hearing shenanigans gobbled up the headlines, but actual substantive news happened regarding talks with China and North Korea—in particular, a planned tariff…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The federal government was on a four-day work week in honor of George Washington’s birthday, but agencies still found time to issue regulations ranging from…
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Say No to Trump’s Proposed Auto Tariffs
President Trump is mulling a tariff on automobiles. Joining a long list of people urging him against it is the Japanese auto industry. That opposition…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress and President Trump passed a spending bill to avoid another shutdown, but President Trump’s national emergency declaration over a non-emergency provides a troubling precedent…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The delayed State of the Union speech happened on Tuesday, but contained no surprises on the policy front. The length of the Federal Register doubled…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Midwest froze, but the Federal Register began to heat up. As I predicted earlier, the first three post-shutdown editions were slow. Then Thursday’s edition…
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The Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act
This week Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) introduced the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act, which would reduce the president’s authority to unilaterally enact new tariffs by…
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The Shutdown Is Over: How Does that Affect Regulation?
During the partial shutdown, the Federal Register slowed to a crawl. Published every weekday, an average day’s edition consists of about 270 pages and contains…