This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

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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, but his G20 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping did little to allay uncertainty surrounding said tariffs. Meanwhile, regulatory agencies issued new regulations ranging from pear taxes to vehicle interchanges.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 73 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 40 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 18 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 3,094 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,292 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,140 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,905 pages the previous week.
  • The 2018 Federal Register totals 63,381 pages. It is on pace for 67,427 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Five such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is a net savings ranging from $348.9 million to $560.9 million.
  • Agencies have published 102 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • So far in 2018, 593 new rules affect small businesses; 25 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.