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The Daily Economy
‘Violent Saviors’: William Easterly’s Book on Imperialism and Conquest
While framed as a book about economic development theory and the history of colonialism, William Easterly’s latest tome is actually something grander and more ambitious:…
National Review
Freedom from the Robinson-Patman Act Is Never More Than One Generation Away from Extinction
The National Review cited CEI’s new report on the Robinson- Patman law As I detail in a new report for the Competitive Enterprise…
The Washington Examiner
Despite its reluctance, tariff setting is the job of Congress — not Trump
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling against the legality of President Donald Trump’s tariffs was fundamentally about the rule…
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Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Federalism wins with Patrick Gleason
In this week’s episode we cover President Biden’s attack on shrinkflation, barriers to workplace flexibility, and a motherlode of domestic lithium.
Blog
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: A slush fund for the EPA and favored nonprofits
President Joe Biden signed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law on August 16, 2022. The bill, enacted on a purely partisan basis,…
Daily Caller
Biden Has Cracked Down On Big Business Mergers And Monopolies. Are Americans Better Off Because Of It?
CEI’s Jessica Melugin is cited in Daily Caller on mergers and monopolies: “The Biden administration’s government-wide attack on American businesses has stifled efficiency and…
Comment
Comment on FTC Unfair or Deceptive Fees
Dear Commissioners, On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I respectfully submit the following comments in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rulemaking concerning…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Independent contractors and emergency haddock action
Happy MLK-government snow shutdown days, everyone. There was more shutdown drama last week. The US launched strikes against the Houthis, one of three factions trying…
Blog
Transparent New Year: SEC shows its work after CEI prodding
As we enter the New Year, it is important to reflect on what went well and not so well in 2023. We should do our…
Blog
Liz Warren’s revolving door with Wall Street
There was an interesting development in the world of big government and big business recently. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared that “The abuse of…
Blog
No, we don’t want as many new laws as possible
The New York Times recently published an article reviewing what happened in the House of Representatives over the past 12 months, and it gives…
Blog
Even the University of California system has dropped carbon offsets
MIT Technology Review just published an article on one of my perennial favorite topics, carbon offsets. According to senior editor James Temple, the University…
Blog
Should government-favored non-profits have their own shadow courts?
Imagine being sued by a private nonprofit that is sanctioned by a federal agency to enforce securities laws. The nonprofit appoints its own judges and…
Blog
Defense bill amendment could help undo China’s unfair advantage in environmental treaties
Congress is currently considering the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (NDAA), including a long list of amendments added to the bill.
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Making Congress work with Kevin Kosar
In this week’s episode we cover people who fetishize old homes, the big AI risk no one’s talking about, how environmentalist activists…
Blog
Federal Reserve to cut interest rates next year?
As expected, the Federal Reserve kept the federal funds rate the same this week, which influences other interest rates, including car and mortgage payments. The…
Blog
Biden’s yearly Federal Register second-highest page count ever, could still score number one
The Federal Register is the daily depository of rules and regulations. Today, the count stood at 86,256 pages, with three weeks to go for Joe…
Blog
Federal government waves goodbye to ‘economically significant’ regulations
Last week, the Fall 2023 edition of the White House’s Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions appeared. It features the…
Daily Caller
Here’s Where Americans Are Feeling The Greatest Pain Under Biden’s Economy
CEI’s Ryan Young cited in the Daily Caller on economic conditions: “When some goods are hurt worse than others, the causes are not inflation,”…
Blog
Equity shmequity: How US government’s ‘discounting’ policy hurts the global poor
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently finalized its Circular A-4 guidance on regulatory analysis, constituting the first update to the guidance in…
Blog
Ten Thousand Commandments 2023 is out now
The 2023 edition of CEI’s flagship annual study, Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments, is out now. For those not familiar, 10KC gives a big-picture…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Making college pay with Preston Cooper
In this week’s episode we cover Javier Milei’s election as president of Argentina, how much money it takes to be happy,…
Blog
Vehicle kill switches and other horrible things Washington is doing to us from a distance
The remote kill switch for automobiles authorized by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021 is a prime…
Blog
Experts weigh in: Sen. Cassidy’s carbon tariff bill would mean more taxes
A carbon tax is both bad policy and dumb politics. Yet Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) has just introduced legislation, the Foreign Pollution Fee…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: The trouble with big-government conservatives with André Béliveau
In this week’s episode we talk about which state has the least-bad business taxes, how many Americans really love America, the continuing…
Forbes
Biden’s New AI Executive Order Is Regulation Run Amok
Signed yesterday, President Biden’s new executive order on artificial intelligence safety is already making waves across the technology industry. While the intention of…
Blog
Biden administration cites fanciful numbers to support ‘right to repair’
The Biden White House hosted an event on right to repair last Tuesday to provide information “about federal and state efforts to strengthen the…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Joint employers and almond taxes
GDP grew 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023. Mike Johnson became Speaker of the House. Agencies issued new regulations ranging from Kraft…
News Release
Biden executive order on artificial intelligence will be a problem: CEI analysis
President Biden is reportedly poised to sign an executive order aimed at monitoring artificial intelligence technology and moving toward new regulations for AI. CEI experts expressed…
Blog
Biden admin wants to sweep independent agency regulation costs under the rug. Congress should say no.
When Congress gets around to streamlining federal regulations and forcing disclosure of their costs, exposés of the paperwork inflicted on the economy by independent…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Financial regulation and ESG with Hester Peirce
In this week’s episode we talk about commuting via bicycle, regulatory reform legislation from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the new book…
Blog
The way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded is unconstitutional
Today the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association. The appellee correctly complains that…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Improper CHIPS funding to pool motors
The FTC filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away. The federal government almost partially shut down. Agencies issued new regulations…
Blog
Net neutrality is political predation
It’s fitting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chose to dig up the net neutrality corpse just before Halloween. Now, our elected representatives need to…
Blog
Federal agency closes! British embassy celebrates!
Nobody knows how many federal agencies there are, but the number just went down by one. The Board of Tea Experts is shutting down…
Blog
What’s wrong with Bidenomics?
Yesterday, I pointed out that in the looming threat of a government shutdown, President Joe Biden is aiming to cement as his legacy something that…
Blog
Shareholder support for ESG proposals is falling
With the 2023 proxy voting season officially behind us, we can note a few trends in corporate governance that stood out. For one, it…
Blog
What I told Congress about the unlawful plan to ‘align’ NEPA with Biden Climate Targets
I testified today at the House Natural Resources Oversight Subcommittee hearing on “Examining Systemic Government Overreach at CEQ.” My testimony developed three main points…
Blog
The Powell Memo was good, actually
This week the Competitive Enterprise Institute published my study (co-written with my colleague Iain Murray) on the 50-plus year history of the…
Blog
Politicians take too much credit for good news
Over Labor Day weekend, Inside Sources syndicated an op-ed of mine arguing that politicians do not deserve credit for the economy’s post-COVID recovery. They…
Blog
Climate policy deserves thoughtful discourse, not petty attacks: a response to Paul Krugman
Just because someone doesn’t support an extreme climate policy agenda, like the Inflation Reduction Act, doesn’t mean that they deny climate change is occurring. Science…
Blog
Biden administration working overtime to regulate working overtime
The Biden administration issued a new rule this week that vastly expands of the number of workers covered by federal overtime rules. While some…
Blog
Why Congress needs to care about Biden’s ‘Circular A-4’ subterfuge
Proposed changes in the American government’s executive regulatory functions showcase a conflict of visions over separation of powers; over executive overreach; over the size and…
Blog
Trump proposes 10 percent universal tariff
Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of life. It’s not even necessarily a bad thing. If you’re the entrepreneurial type, mistakes are an opportunity to learn…
Blog
‘Economically significant’ regulations: an obituary
I never thought I’d miss “economically significant” rules and regulations. But Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14094 (“Modernizing Regulatory Review”) has redefined “Significant regulatory action.”…
Testimony
The Disproportionate Burden of Federal Regulation on Small Businesses
Submission to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship Hearing on “One Size Does Not Fit All: Understanding the Importance of Rightsizing Regulations…
Blog
America receives first debt downgrade in 12 years as history repeats itself
Fitch Ratings, a credit reporting agency, recently issued a foreboding outlook on America’s credit health. For the first time in 12 years, the United States…
Blog
Work, dignity, and the common good
Many on the right (especially self-described “national conservatives”) say that there is no “dignified work” for Americans today. What they mean by this is,…
Blog
GOOD Act only first step in forcing federal agencies to come clean on guidance documents
Alongside the familiar profusion of notice-and-comment regulations, federal agency guidance can include memoranda, notices, bulletins, directives, news releases, letters; even blog posts and…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: dishwashers and shore leave
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates again, and GDP grew at a healthy 2.4 percent annualized rate. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
Blog
Are we ready for a ‘Carbon’ Futures Trading Commission?
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is testing the waters for its commodity-based carbon credit market. As an agency traditionally tasked with regulating commodities, the…
Discourse Magazine
Red and Blue States Take Sides in Federal ESG Fight
The environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement has become one of the most divisive issues among state legislators in 2023. ESG refers to a set…
Blog
Raise the Wage Act reintroduced, still wouldn’t help workers
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) has reintroduced the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour. Previous…
Blog
CEI leads coalition opposing crazy regulatory crackdown on dishwashers
The American public remains angry over federal meddling in gas stoves – for good reason, given that not one but two Biden administration regulatory agencies…
Blog
Regulatory reform in the 118th Congress: The Regulatory Transparency Act
The current regulatory approval process lacks transparency and objectivity. While past executive orders and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directives require that economically…
Blog
Biden admin plans to rig cost-benefit analysis, boosting federal regulations
When the Biden administration took office, one of its first actions was to order a series of updates to the federal rulemaking process, all under…
Blog
House hearing warns of Biden’s admin’s ‘death by a thousand regulations’
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee held a hearing last week titled “Death by a Thousand Regulations: The Biden Administration’s Campaign to Bury America…
Blog
Businesses flocking to states with lower taxes, better regulations
Experts on U.S. economic policy spend a lot of time looking at competition between states and how good tax and regulatory policy can help…
Blog
America takes Entrepreneurship Index top spot, former Soviet bloc countries close behind
Retail software maker Shopify recently released its “Entrepreneurship Index,” a global ecosystem of entrepreneurial activity. Shopify ranks the top ten countries with economies that…
Blog
Market failure? Let’s talk about government failure
Government interventions in the market are often said to be justified by market failures, which prevent the free market from maximizing social welfare. What is…
Blog
Adam Smith’s ‘tolerable administration’ vs. America’s increasingly intolerable one
2023 is the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith’s birth. This post is part of a series highlighting aspects of Smith’s thought that continue to influence…
Blog
Senate Commerce hearing shows why some junk fees aren’t garbage
In his State of the Union address this February, President Biden reiterated his intent to crack down on so-called junk fees. Biden discussed…
News Release
Inflation Slows, Fed Actions Pay Off: CE Analysis
Consumer prices rose 0.1 percent in May (up 4 percent this past year), according new inflation data released today by the Labor Department. Inflation…
Blog
Biden Labor pick Julie Su claims she cannot recall her Prop 22 vote
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su claimed multiple times Wednesday that she could not recall how she voted on California’s Proposition 22, the ballot initiate…
Blog
Biden administration keeps making it harder to track government ‘guidance’ documents
Federal government “guidance documents” consist of agency memoranda, bulletins, circulars, administrative interpretations, letters, manuals, and so much more. These are not supposed to be regulatory…
National Review
Global Britain Is Closed for Business
One of the supposed benefits of Brexit was that Britain would once again become “Global Britain,” able to adjust its regulatory approaches to one more…
Comment
Comments to the Office of Management and Budget on the proposed draft update to Circular A-4: Regulatory Analysis
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit public interest organization committed to advancing the principles of free markets and limited government. CEI has a…
Daily Caller
Biden Wants To Give Power Over Defense Contracts To Climate Activist ‘Cabal’ Bent On Curtailing Economic Growth
The Daily Caller quotes CEI’s Myron Ebell on giving certain climate activist groups veto power over major Pentagon contracts: Myron…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: electric motors and small business loans
Congress and President Biden reached a debt ceiling deal. Texas attorney general and antitrust hawk Ken Paxton was impeached. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
Blog
‘Passive-aggressive’ regulators are a growing headache for American business
“The Future of Independent Agencies: Fallout from Problems at the Federal Trade Commission,” was an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to alert…
Blog
Congress should stop the White House from rewriting ‘Circular A-4’
Barring an extension, next week (June 6) is the deadline for comments on the White House Office of Management and Budget’s …
Blog
Debt deal’s PAYGO law won’t pay out. Here’s how to fix it.
In an effort to curb excessive government spending, a provision known as statutory administrative PAYGO (Pay-As-You-Go) has been introduced in the debt ceiling deal struck…
Blog
Let’s get this huge ‘hidden tax’ of regulation out into the open
Smack dab in the middle of contentious debt limit negotiations, the House Budget Committee held another in its series of hearings on American economic growth,…
Blog
A remembrance: C. Boyden Gray, 1943-2023
We mourn the passing of C. Boyden Gray. He was a man of his family, the law, and his country. Boyden served in the highest…
Blog
Bill targets ag department slush fund worth billions
The House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee favorably reported its spending bill along party lines Thursday. The bill’s next stop is the full House Appropriations…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Letting people prosper with Vance Ginn
In this week’s episode we talk about Warren Buffet’s electric vehicle pessimism, sky-high school funding in New York City, a report…
Blog
Robert Lucas, economist of possibilities, 1937-2023
Robert Lucas, 85, passed away this week. He was a prominent macroeconomist who won the 1995 economics Nobel. Others have remembered Lucas’s contributions to rationality…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: toy guns and trophy fisheries
The 2023 Federal Register topped 30,000 pages on May 8. New inflation numbers looked better on the surface, but actually got worse. A new…
Blog
New credit card late fee rule hurts folks who pay their bills on time
There has rightly been an outcry after the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which sets policy for the government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie…
Blog
Senate committee yells ‘all aboard!’ for controversial Railway Safety Act
The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved the Railway Safety Act this morning, with all Democrats and Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (OH) and Eric Schmitt…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: cloudy guidance documents and potato ledprona
The number of new final regulations this year topped 1,000 last week. It was the rare 3,000-page for the Federal Register, which will likely surpass…
Wall Street Journal
Don’t Let Unspent Covid Funds Become Slush Funds
The House has passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which would raise the debt limit for a year in exchange for deficit-relief measures. One of…
Blog
New Jersey fishermen challenge Chevron deference
Big news out of the Supreme Court this week as justices have agreed to hear a lawsuit challenging the so-called Chevron doctrine, a policy requiring…
National Review
Make Federal Red Tape Part of the Debt-Ceiling Fight
Last week, the House passed a bill that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for more than $4 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade.
Blog
The week in ridiculous regulations: Oklahoma emissions and Big Creek crayfish
GDP grew by 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023. Cable news hosts Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were both fired. Meanwhile, agencies…
Blog
Has Gary Gensler turned the SEC into a regulatory ‘Hotel California’?
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler hadn’t testified before the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 months. Republican members made up for lost…
News Release
US Economy Grew 1.1 Percent First Quarter 2023 – Could Be Worse: CEI Analysis
The U.S. economy grew 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Statistics. It may seem underwhelming, but…
Blog
Regulatory reform in the 118th Congress: Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act
The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) of 1980 was an important transparency measure for vetting new regulations. But it falls short in some important areas,…
Blog
Romney slams Labor nominee Su’s ‘so severely lacking’ record
Julie Su, the White House’s pick to replace outgoing Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, had her first of two Senate hearings Thursday. Sen. Mitt Romney…
Blog
Congress shouldn’t party like it’s 2019 on national debt
Now comes the GOP’s turn to do its own version of a “lockdown.” Republicans should heed the advice of a member of the other party, Rahm…
The Washington Times
Don’t Cede Fairness to Liberals
Most people care about fairness. Humans are, after all, moral creatures. And yet it’s mostly the political left that speaks of “fairness.” That’s unfortunate, because…
Real Clear Policy
The Greatest Trick ‘the Swamp’ Ever Pulled
Why are anti-establishment Republicans embracing the special interest racket of Washington, D.C.? In 2016, candidate Donald J. Trump ran on a promise to drain ‘the…
News Release
Biden Veto Means ESG Investment Rule Means Politicized Investing for Pensions
President Biden today vetoed a resolution passed by Congress that would have stopped a Labor Department rule on ESG investing. Specifically, the rule, “Prudence and…
Blog
Free the Economy Episode 12: Consumer Welfare and Big Government with Patrick Hedger
This week we talk about the drama with Silicon Valley Bank and the proposal from Wayne Crews for an Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act, how…
Blog
Why Congress Must Think Twice About Adopting Biden’s Brazen Budget Proposal
Last Thursday, President Joe Biden finally unveiled his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year 2024. This marks the third straight year that Biden…
News Release
Biden Budget Amounts to Top-Down Central Planning, Lacks Needed Reforms
President Biden today unveiled his latest budget submitted to Congress. CEI experts take a dim view of the agenda of excess spending and regulation…
Blog
Regulatory Reform Bills in the 118th Congress: The Article I Regulatory Budget Act
The federal government is supposed to put out an annual budget to track its spending. Why doesn’t it do the same thing for regulation? The…
Blog
Fed Economist: Study Shows Danger of Government-Mandated Financial Misinformation
Study from Fed Economist Shows Danger of Government-Mandated Financial Misinformation The “Twitter Files” have made some shocking revelations about government entities…
National Review
FTC Runs into the Judicial Wall
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust crusade has run into an obstacle: the judiciary. Indeed, the agency wants to expand its authority and broaden enforcement standards so…
New York Post
The numbers prove Cuomo’s lockdowns hurt NYers on EVERY metric — while Florida flourished
What a difference a few years make. In 2020, the mainstream media lauded Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his strong but compassionate COVID-19 leadership. He won a…
Blog
Are Americans Investing for Retirement or Politics?
Being able to save enough during our working lives to fund a comfortable retirement is a top concern for most American households, especially since…
The Well News
Justice Dept. Sues Google Again Alleging Monopolistic Ad Tactics
Google was joined in criticizing the Justice Department by Jessica Melugin, the director for technology and innovation at the Washington, D.C.-based…
Washington Journal
VIDEO: CEI’s Kent Lassman Joins CSPAN to Discuss House Republican economic policy goals
CEI President Kent Lassman joined CSPAN’s Washington Journal to discuss House Republicans’ policy proposals to tackle inflation and grow the economy contained in the party’s…
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