Featured Posts
News Release
Trump’s criminal investigation of Fed chairman a mistake: CEI analysis
The Trump Justice Department’s newly announced criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve chairman, ostensibly concerning renovations of the Fed’s headquarters, is a mistake. Ryan Young,…
The Orange County
America’s AI electricity ‘crisis’ is easily fixed: Unleash market forces
The Orange County Register cited CEI’s expert on data centers public utility price. Communities are rebelling against the construction of massive data farms.
News Release
Tariffs loom over US economy’s disappointing job gains for December 2025
The US economy added a disappointing 50,000 jobs in December 2025, according to government data. CEI experts point to tariffs and economic uncertainty as a…
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Blog
America’s Cultural Revolution
In his forthcoming book, The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray talks about how socialism in China produced the Cultural Revolution. The text of the book was…
News Release
House Infrastructure Spending Bill Serves as Green ATM
House Democrats will vote today on the INVEST in America Act (H.R. 2), a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure spending bill. CEI experts across a spectrum…
Blog
George Washington’s Fight (and Ours) against Regulation without Representation
Those who have followed CEI over the years know that one of our main grievances is “Regulation Without Representation.” The phrase—an apt description of laws…
Blog
Emergencies and the Project Manager’s Dilemma
Government agencies’ initial responses to the COVID-19 crisis were notable for one particular characteristic: incompetence. From basic errors in data collection, through failed lab safety…
Cato Journal
Book Review: The American Dream Is Not Dead (But Populism Could Kill It)
Capitalism’s populist critics, on both left and right, have got their critique backward—not only are earnings and economic opportunity not evaporating, as they claim, but…
Blog
Unintended Consequences of Price Gouging
Price gouging legislation routinely backfires. Price controls make shortages worse. In a crisis, this is especially harmful. And even if price gouging legislation were to…
Blog
Value of Employee Benefits in Eye of Beholder
Advocates of “social responsibility” and environmental, social, and governance standards for companies have little interest in their proposed requirements being voluntary, despite frequent protestations to…
Blog
“Social Responsibility” Expectations for Business Pivot from Voluntary to Mandatory
The Financial Times reported that many companies have cut dividends to shareholders because they are struggling with the current economic downturn. But even after we’ve…
Blog
There Is No Such Thing as “Safe”
Iain Murray has a great essay up at Law & Liberty today on why some groups of Americans are perceiving quarantine policies so differently from…
Blog
Lean on Business Leaders to Defend Markets
One on the main goals of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Advancing Capitalism is for more business leaders to prioritize the defense of the…
Blog
Time for a Federal Price Gouging Law?
Amazon’s vice president of public policy calls for a federal price gouging law in a recent post over at Amazon’s in-house blog. This is a…
Blog
Does Uncle Sam Support Single Moms? The Question of Federal Funds for Strip Clubs
Should U.S. taxpayer dollars be loaned to strip clubs? What would have sounded like a joke just a few months ago is now a reality…
Blog
Retro Review: Irving Kristol’s “Two Cheers for Capitalism”
Long before we began debating the wisdom of neoconservative foreign policy, Irving Kristol was writing about domestic economic policy and the future of capitalism. His…
Blog
The Economy after COVID-19 Will Be Different from Before, Part One
As governors begin to lift restrictions on economic activity, polling data show that Americans are generally still afraid of the virus and have changed their…
The Washington Examiner
Contact Tracing: Let the Private Sector Lead
As state and local restrictions begin to relax, the essential questions for many people are remarkably similar to what we asked in March. What will…
Blog
Shield Employers from COVID-19 Liabilities Created by Government
Now that government officials and business owners are planning for a “semi-normal” phase of post-quarantine reopening, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s recent “Implementing a National…
Blog
Antitrust Investigation of Amazon Won’t Benefit Consumers
Launching another antitrust investigation into Amazon won’t benefit consumers. The U.S. antitrust law standard is consumer harm. To stretch antitrust investigations to include data, privacy,…
Letters
Open Letter to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink
Dear Mr. Fink, As the nation stands at the edge of an economic precipice and stares into it bleakly, you and your firm, the largest…
Inside Sources
Post-Virus Economics – Working Toward a Small Business Recovery
When the stay-at-home orders are lifted, we’ll be in a race to get millions of Americans back to work. Large companies will be in a…
Blog
Robots Are Here to Make Your Job Safer and Cleaner
Positive stories about win-win results from the march of automation are everywhere in our economy, but they don’t get told and repeated enough. The workers…
Washington Examiner
Prepare for the next pandemic with a commission to kill #NeverNeeded regulations
The coronavirus pandemic needs a long-term policy response.
Blog
Antitrust Policy #NeverNeeded and Dangerous in a Crisis
The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission will now allow some collaboration between companies to address the corona virus health threat. They also warned a…
Forbes
Phase 4 Coronavirus Infrastructure Spending To Start At $2 Trillion
There’s still a chance for what next juggernauts America’s way to be made more sensible. We can liberalize infrastructure and the regulation of it rather than…
Blog
New York Times Explains Foolishness of Trump’s General Motors Nationalization
Last Friday, President Trump nationalized General Motors, ordering the company to produce as many ventilators as HHS Secretary Alex Azar says is necessary to address…
Blog
Trump Administration Suspends Tariffs, but Not Confusion, for Three Months
On Friday evening, the Trump administration announced it would stop collecting all tariff revenue for three months, effective immediately. In ordinary times, the news would…
Blog
COVID-19 Relief Bill Passes without Frivolous Green Baggage
The Senate passed a $2 trillion COVID-19 relief and economic stimulus bill by a 96-0 vote. The House passed the bill by voice vote on March 27. The…
Blog
VIDEO: Reforming Antitrust for Global Competitiveness
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recently hosted its latest virtual event, “Reforming Antitrust Policy for an Era of Global Competitiveness.” ITIF President Rob Atkinson…
Blog
House Democrats’ Third Coronavirus Supplemental Appropriation Bill Is an Outrage
The Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act is the most irresponsible piece of fiscal legislation to come out of the profligate Congress for a…
Blog
Gingrich Praise of Huawei is Dangerously Misguided
After attempting to cover up the spread of the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party is now engaged in a…
Letters
CEI Joins Coalition Letter Urging House to Reject “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act”
We, the undersigned 26 organizations, on behalf of more than 250 million taxpayers and consumers across these United States, urge you in the strongest possible…
News Release
CEI Experts Blast Attempts to Politicize COVID-19 Relief Bill
While the nation suffers, Washington has descended into an unseemly squabble over the latest COVID-19 relief bill. Politicians from all quarters are attempting to expand…
Blog
A Billion Here, a Billion There …
Amidst all these temporary war powers, rules, regulations, commands, restrictions, bailouts, and stimulus packages, it is wise to remember the words of Milton Friedman: “Nothing…
Blog
Toilet Paper Economics: Emergency Capitalism Still Better Than Normal Socialism
There are quite a few hot takes circulating at the moment about how grocery stores temporarily running out of toilet paper amid the current coronavirus…
Blog
Sen. Toomey Defends Capitalism
This week Sen. Pat Toomey gave an excellent and much-needed speech at the Heritage Foundation on capitalism and its right-leaning critics. Toomey made clear that…
Blog
Big-Mouth CEOs Less of a Threat than Crusading Politicians
Free-market advocates are understandably skeptical of “stakeholder” capitalism—the idea that corporate managers should focus not just on returns to shareholders, but on pleasing a potentially…
Blog
VIDEO: Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word
Former Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg recently made an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute to promote his new book, Trade Is Not a Four…
FEE
Was the New Deal Really a War on Free Enterprise? It’s Complicated
Cornell University historian Lawrence Glickman has mined an impressive volume of documents and diversity of sources in order to understand the meaning of a potent…
Blog
Two Cheers for Nikki Haley’s Defense of Capitalism
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has written a bold and, for the most part, very good op-ed on the future of…
Blog
“Scientocracy” Highlights Problematic Incentives in Government Research
Yesterday CEI put on an excellent event on science policy on Capitol Hill on the new book Scientocracy: The Tangled Web of Public Science and…
Blog
New Analysis on Tax and Regulatory Issues for Carsharing Companies
Our friend and Tech Policy Podcast host Ash Kazaryan recently recorded a fascinating interview with Reason Foundation Policy Analyst Spence Purnell on how Florida (and…
Blog
Amazon Documentary Shows How Consumers Benefit
PBS’s Frontline aired its documentary, “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” last night. While the tone of the piece was markedly suspicious,…
Blog
Antitrust Enforcement in 4-D
Competition is an ongoing discovery process. The reason firms exist is not to enable or restrict competition. It is to reduce transaction costs. There is…
National Review
Them the People
National Review cites senior fellow Iain Murray on democratic socialism: Murray, talking about his forthcoming book The Socialist Temptation at a CEI event in New Orleans, describes the inherent tension…
Blog
NBC/WSJ Poll: “Socialism” Not So Popular After All
NBC News and The Wall Street Journal just released a new poll that finds capitalism isn’t underwater with the American public just yet. Registered voters…
Blog
Economic Planning and Dead Mall Legends
The kind of American chain stores and retail formats that dominated the second half of the 20th century have fallen on hard times in the…
Blog
Are the Climate and Capitalism at War?
Many contemporary environmentalists share two important beliefs: a) that anthropogenic climate change is the biggest threat to the future of humanity and b) that a…
Blog
Dog Bites Man in Davos
J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently said that “most state-owned enterprises don’t do a particularly good job.” The head of the world’s largest bank…
The Atlantic
Abuse of Power Is a Dangerous Standard for Democrats to Play With
Almost the minute after the White House released its 110-page brief for the Senate impeachment trial, careful observers noticed a contradiction between the White House counsel’s…
Blog
How Antitrust Intervention Backfires
Antitrust policy interventions into the market rarely work as intended.
Letters
CEI Joins Coalition Letter on Proposed Rule on Securing the ICTS Supply Chain
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, representing a diverse coalition of taxpayer and consumer advocacy groups, we write urging you to withdraw or significantly amend…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Richard Morrison
Senior Fellow
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Capitalism and Free Enterprise
Ryan Young
Senior Economist and Director of Publications
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform