Blog
Would a TSA Strike Force an End to the Shutdown?
As the current partial federal government shutdown drags on and many federal employees continue to go without pay, some pundits have suggested that one way…
Blog
In Aftermath of ‘Janus’ Decision, Blue States Push Pro-Union Bills
Prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, government unions were already devising ways to keep members and dues flowing. In a…
Blog
EPA’s Wheeler Responds to Renewable Fuel Standard Questions
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held its confirmation hearing for acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler on January 16th. The Renewable Fuel…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Last week, people got worked up over hamburgers and a television commercial about razors. Meanwhile the partial federal shutdown continued, and a bill to introduce…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Banking and Finance
Perhaps one of the most under-appreciated aspects of our modern world is the fact that finance is fundamental to the operation of a free and…
Blog
VIDEO: Lower Shipping Costs, Repeal the Jones Act
The Jones Act, originally passed in 1920, is a law that requires ships that service U.S. ports to be entirely U.S. owned and operated. This…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Trade
President Trump’s doubling of tariffs has already cost the economy almost 1.8 percentage points of growth. That means 2018’s 3.4 percent third quarter growth could…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Energy and Environment
Wealthier is healthier—and environmentally cleaner as well. Despite the fact that the most prosperous nations are also the cleanest, and that prosperity is best achieved…
Blog
Brexit: The EU’s Gordian Knot Strangles May’s Government
When Rory Broomfield and I were examining the prospects for Britain leaving the European Union in 2014-16, we recognized that there was no easy way…
Blog
Department of Justice Disregards Intent of Congress on Internet Gambling
Congress was not vague in its intent when it enacted the Wire Act in 1961. The law, developed and supported by then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy,…
Blog
Supreme Court Should Review Oregon’s Discriminatory Fuel Pricing Rules
Last week, American fuel manufactures filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to review a lower court decision upholding an Oregon law…
Blog
Time to Restore Traditional Joint-Employer Standard
This week the public comment period closes in regards to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) proposed rule to modify the standard for joint employment. This…
Blog
Teachers Paid to Walk Off the Job?
The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union contract negotiations with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have broken down. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl called…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Consumer Freedom
The second-to-last chapter in the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s agenda for the 116th Congress focuses on consumer freedom. Specifically, the chapter recommends ways Congress can rein…
Blog
Eliminate Obsolete Patented and Proprietary Products Regulation
Today, I submitted comments to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on behalf of CEI in response to a notice of proposed rulemaking on promoting innovation in…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
On Saturday the partial government shutdown became the longest ever. The news cycle was wall-to-wall wall and shutdown coverage, though Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) introduced…
Blog
Oregon Court Rebuffs Kids’ Climate Lawsuit
Oregon’s Court of Appeals ruled on 9th January that the public-trust doctrine does not impose a “fiduciary obligation” on the state to develop and implement…
Blog
Green New Deal: 626 Groups Send Congress a Back-to-Dark Ages Manifesto
Six-hundred twenty-six organizations, some of them major environmental groups, sent a letter to Members of the House of Representatives on January 10th that details their demands for…
Blog
VIDEO: What Beer Can Teach Us about Well-Crafted Laws
Our friends at the Federalist Society have released a fun and informative new short film on the history of beer and alcohol regulation. …
Blog
Reject U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act’s Presidential Power Grab
A forthcoming bill, the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act, written by “Death by China” coauthor Peter Navarro and other presidential advisers, seeks to expand the president’s…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: Regulatory Reform
The first chapter in the new Competitive Enterprise Institute agenda for Congress, “Free to Prosper,” is on regulatory reform. Most of the Agenda is about reforming…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: The Second Decade of Crypto-Blockchain
As cryptocurrency and the associated blockchain celebrate their tenth birthdays, CEI’s new “Free to Prosper” agenda for the 116th Congress aims to ensure bureaucratic red…
Blog
Introducing a Free-Market Agenda for Accountability and Prosperity
The governance of American life has been handed over to an operating system that subtly and perversely drives individuals’ behavior away from their own decisions.
Blog
The Legacy of Economist Harold Demsetz (1930-2019)
Economist Harold Demsetz, a Chicago school theorist who was one of the pioneers of the approach now called New Institutional Economics, had died. The former…
Blog
Environmental Protection Agency Proposes Changes to Mercury Air Rule
On December 28th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to rescind the Obama EPA’s justification for its 2012 Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule. MATS…
Blog
A Free-Market Agenda for the 116th Congress
After a contentious election season, we look forward to the nation’s elected representatives rolling up their sleeves and getting to work. Divided party control in…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Right now is a weird time for regulation. The shutdown has lasted for several business days, and the Federal Register has slowed to a trickle.
Blog
Iconic NYC Bookstore Owner Pleads: Don’t Landmark My Property
Our friends at Reason have been following a fascinating story unfolding in New York City, in which a business owner is trying to fend off what many people would…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Consumer Financial Protection
2018 was a big year for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (also known, for a while, as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection). The past year…
Blog
End of the Road for Net Neutrality Comeback Attempt
The end of the 115th Congress meant the end of using the Congressional Review Act to void the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of Obama-era net…
Blog
Great Jobs Numbers Don’t Assuage Trade War Worries
Today’s jobs numbers were a surprise to everyone—312,000 jobs added in December was almost twice the consensus view of economists of 176,000. Strong wage growth…
Blog
What’s on Tap for Trade in 2019
At noon today, the 116th Congress convened. Over at Fox Business, Iain Murray and I look at what the coming year has in store for…
Blog
The 2019 Unconstitutionality Index
Even in an administration attempting to cut regulation, the number of rules from hundreds of federal agencies (nobody really knows exactly how many) will vastly outstrip the…
Blog
Trump’s 2018 Deregulatory Effort: 3,367 Rules, 68,082 Pages
At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going?…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The shutdown continued all through Christmas week. But because the Federal Register works on a few days lag for many of its publications, it still…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Climate Policy
The Trump administration this year took additional steps to dismantle key components of President Obama’s climate policy “legacy.” Supporting and guiding those efforts is a…
Blog
VIDEO: What Qualifies as a ‘Water’ of the United States?
Our friends at the Regulatory Transparency Project have created a great new video to help explain the legal impact of the Clean Water Act and…
Blog
An Executive Order to Shine Light on Dark Matter
Over at The Hill, Wayne Crews and I make the case for an executive order that would limit executive power. It’s more plausible than it…
Blog
Best Books of 2018: Clashing over Commerce
Douglas Irwin’s magnum opus, published at the end of 2017, is already a classic. Given the prominent role trade is playing in politics right now, it…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Internet Sales Tax
On June 21, 2018, in South Dakota v. Wayfair, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed fifty years of precedent by allowing states to collect sales taxes…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In an eventful week that included criminal justice reform, shutdown drama, and cabinet drama, this year’s new regulations exceeded 2017’s total with more than a…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Trade Policy
2018 was the year in which President Trump began to implement his campaign promises of using tariffs to change America’s trade policy. The ostensible reason…
Blog
Best Books of 2018: Life after Google
Are Tucker Carlson’s predictions of Google taking over the future keeping you up at night? Sooth yourself with the creative destruction described in “Life after…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Antitrust
If 2018 was a bad year for antitrust skeptics, 2019 promises to be worse. We must hope that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of…
Blog
Best Books of 2018: Suicide of the West & Enlightenment Now
Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West” is a literate, snappily written, and often humorous defense of Enlightenment values and a broadside against populism. Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Transportation Policy
CEI had a busy year in the transportation policy trenches. We worked at the federal, state, and local levels on a variety of projects. Below…
Blog
Best Books of 2018: Factfulness
Think Julian Simon, Matt Ridley, and Steven Pinker’s data-driven optimism, mixed with Michael Shermer and Bryan Caplan’s awareness of human cognitive biases, as told by…
Blog
Kent Lassman’s Christmas Wish List
The holiday season is a good time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and what we can look forward to in the next year. That’s…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Labor and Employment
There was a mix of good and bad news in the labor and employment policy space in 2018. A tremendous gain was made in the…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Operation Choke Point
Every Halloween, there exists the temptation for commentators to describe routine events in the news with adjectives like “scary” and “frightening.” Sensitive to sounding clichéd…
Blog
Best Books of 2018: Judicial Fortitude
My pick for one of the best books of this year is “Judicial Fortitude: The Last Chance to Rein in the Administrative State” (Encounter Books,…
Blog
EPA Takes on Costly, Unnecessary Wood Heater Regulations
The Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency cranked out so many bad major rules that it was hard to pay attention to all the also-bad, but relatively…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A partial federal shutdown looks more likely than it did a week ago, the federal deficit will likely top $1 trillion next year, and Theresa…
Blog
CEI Takes on Antitrust
There is a concerted effort from elements on both sides of the political aisle to use antitrust law to regulate and ultimately break apart Big…
Blog
Attacks on Trump Administration Environmental Federalism Fall Short
Today’s Energy & Environment News (subscription required) has an article titled “Wheeler preaches federalism on water, not cars.” The gist is that various critics claim…
Blog
5 Myths about E-cigarettes and Public Health
My colleague Michelle Minton recently released an excellent new study on the health impact of e-cigarettes and why some people are misrepresenting the risks involved…
Blog
Infrastructure Bill Should Attack Climate Red Tape, Not Increase It
Enacting legislation will be more difficult in next year’s divided Congress, but an infrastructure bill is something that could get done. Democrats and Republicans may be…
Blog
New Joint Employer Rule Means More Jobs, Not Lower Wages
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is in the process of implementing a regulation that would restore the traditional standard for when a worker is…
Blog
Report from United Nations Climate Conference: Heckling the Hecklers
Katowice, Poland—“Le temps est mauvais,” an African delegate told a colleague as they wrapped themselves up against the early evening chill. The weather wasn’t as…
Blog
85 Years after Repeal, Prohibition Lingers in Your Beer
On December 5, 1933 the federal government’s nationwide prohibition against alcohol ended. Eighty-five years later, the beer market seems to have finally recovered. Today, there…
Blog
Top Ten Antitrust Targets
Columbia University professor Tim Wu is author of the new book The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, which calls for a…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Former President George H.W. Bush was laid to rest, and no Federal Register was published on Wednesday. President Trump created a new superhero, Tariff Man,…
Blog
American Association for Justice Places Trial Lawyer Interests over Saving Lives
The bipartisan AV START Act would create the first national highly automated vehicle regulatory framework in the U.S. This legislation is necessary to speed deployment…
Blog
Five Priorities for New BCFP Director
Kathleen Kraninger was confirmed as director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. She has promised to implement a free market reform agenda, focusing on…
Blog
Fighting for Small Business: Whiskey Edition
This week marks the 85th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, and we still have a lot to learn from that dismal experiment in government overreach.
Blog
How Realistic Is National Climate Assessment’s Worst Case Scenario?
How realistic is the National Climate Assessment’s worst-case emissions scenario? A report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Tuesday sheds some interesting…
Blog
Last-Minute Delay in CVS-Aetna Deal Could Threaten Consumer Benefits
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon surprised many on Monday when he announced he may halt the integration of CVS pharmacy’s assets with the nation’s…
Blog
Don’t Blame Google for a Feature Consumers Want
It’s very rare I disagree with the great freedom-loving journalist John Stossel, but his column at Townhall this week made me raise an eyebrow. In…
Blog
Senate Democrats’ Report Misses Mark on Mulvaney
While President Trump’s nominee to head the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Kathleen Kraninger, awaits a final confirmation vote in the Senate, Senate Democrats have…
Blog
Conflict of Interest over Vaping Threatens Public Health
Cigarette smoking kills nearly half a million Americans every year, and for every person who dies due to smoking, at least 30 people live with…
Blog
Can You Buy Alcohol on Christmas (and New Year’s Day) in Your State?
The holidays bring parties, feasts, and libations. But some celebrants may find themselves without a cup of cheer if they wait until the day of a…
Blog
U.S.-China Trade Deal at G20 Small Move in Right Direction
Nobody knew what to expect going into the G20 summit in Argentina, especially from a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In the news, The new NAFTA was signed (but still needs legislative approval in all three countries), General Motors announced major layoffs and plant closures,…
Blog
Latest Bipartisan Carbon Tax Folly
On Tuesday, November 27th, Representatives Ted Deutch (D-FL), Francis Rooney (R-FL), John K. Delaney (D-MD), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Charlie Crist (D-FL) introduced H.R. 7173,…
Blog
New Ideas for Addressing Poverty and Inequality
While the political headlines this week are dominated by a public feud between the Secretary of the Interior and the likely incoming chairman of the…
Blog
National Climate Assessment Still Needs a Reset
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released Volume II of its Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report last week on November 23rd. Volume I,…
Blog
Cathy Chase’s AV START Act Flip-Flop
Cathy Chase, now the president of the lobby group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, was previously a strong supporter of the Senate’s bipartisan AV…
Blog
Draft Legislation Proposes Transition from Renewable Fuel Standard to High-Octane Fuel
In a sweeping effort to change the way Washington regulates both fuels and vehicles, Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Bill Flores (R-TX) of the House…
Blog
Air Conditioning—Treating a Public Health Benefit As a Threat
A study by the International Energy Agency predicts that billions more people around the world will own an air conditioner by 2050. This is great…
Blog
Rubberstamping Regulations Is Not Consumer Protection
Earlier this week, Tribune Publishing’s syndicated travel writer Ed Perkins criticized the appointment of CEI’s Fran Smith to the newly reconstituted Aviation Consumer Protection Advisory…
Blog
Supreme Court Ruling Puts Important Limits on Federal Authority under Endangered Species Act
On November 27, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, that there are limits to how far the federal…
Blog
Britain’s Treaty of Versailles
“Vote leave, take control” was the slogan of the “leave” campaign during the run-up to the vote on whether the United Kingdom should exit the…
Blog
GM Layoffs, Tariffs, and Subsidies
CEI's Ryan Young explores the lessons policymakers should learn from General Motors’ announcement of layoffs and plant closures.
Blog
CEI Comments on Possible Federal Automated Vehicle Pilot Program
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute submitted comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in response to its advance notice of proposed rulemaking on…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was another short work week due to Thanksgiving, while Black Friday’s ritual tramplings put a damper on that day’s productivity. Last week agencies published…
Blog
New Federal Railroad Administration Rule Can Help Reduce Passenger Train Costs
Today, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published its long-awaited final rule to modernize passenger railcar crashworthiness standards. When it takes effect on January 22,…
Blog
Reason’s John Stossel Interviews Michelle Minton on the E-Cigarette Scare
The FDA recently announced new regulations restricting the sale of e-cigarettes, supposedly to protect young people from harms associated with nicotine. However, as CEI Senior…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a short work week due to Veterans Day, as most Americans took time to reflect on the centenary of the World War I…
Blog
Freedom and Whiskey Go Together
Recently Dave Sussman of the show Whiskey Politics featured myself and my old pals Drew Tidwell and Helen Straight of Passing Lane Films on his…
Blog
CEI Challenges Federal Rejection of Alaska’s Pebble Mine
Most job-creating projects don’t require government subsidies―the only thing private sector builders need is less federal red tape getting in their way. A good case…
Blog
Massachusetts Teachers Union Dues Do Not ‘Stay Local’
Labor unions like to promote the narrative that dues payments stay local. If you peruse union websites, a consistent message appears that reads something like this:…
Blog
Repeal Barriers to Competition: Abolish Antitrust
My colleague Iain Murray has some excellent new content out today in the form of a Web Memo titled “How Antitrust Regulation Hinders Innovation and…
Blog
Senate Should Move Forward with Confirmation Votes on Buerkle, Others
With the 2018 election behind us, it’s time to look for opportunities to advance freedom and economic well-being. I don't expect much to happen congressionally given…
Blog
Dockless Bikes, E-Scooters, and Urban Transportation Policy Hypocrisy
In August 2017, I wrote about the municipal government cronyism and monopoly franchise agreements driving the controversy over unsubsidized dockless bikesharing companies. In the rapidly…
Blog
National Labor Relations Board Member Cleared of Ethics Conflict
Republican appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have become the target of an ongoing campaign by Democrats to silence their voices and ability…
Blog
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The midterm elections finally happened. The good news is no more political ads for a while; the bad news is that a bunch of politicians…
Blog
The Montreal Protocol—Did it Really Make a Difference?
An executive summary of the latest scientific compendium on ozone depletion, the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018 is now out. The report was released in…
Blog
Judge Blocks Keystone XL Pipeline
Montana federal judge Brian Morris ruled on November 8th that the State Department and TransCanada Corporation must discontinue all efforts to construct or operate the Keystone XL…
Blog
Happy 50th Anniversary to Reason
Congratulations to our friends at Reason magazine (and the Reason Foundation) on their golden anniversary. Some members of the Competitive Enterprise Institute team were recently…
Blog
Lame Duck Session Should Undo Crippling Rules on Middle-Class Investors and Entrepreneurs
Next year, with Congress divided once again, bipartisan legislation will be the order of the day. Indeed for passage of both chambers, it will be…