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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. …
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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?…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…