The primary focus of the Competitive Enterprise Institute since its founding in 1984 has been to promote deregulation. Government regulation of the economy blocks innovation and wealth creation. It also encourages damaging behavior such as rent-seeking and cronyism. Finally, it crowds out more effective forms of regulation such as market discipline.
The beneficial effects of deregulation were plain in the airline and freight rail industries. Deregulation begun in the Carter administration led to more flights at lower cost and to better rail infrastructure and much lower shipping costs. Yet, since the 1990s, successive administrations of different political stripes have piled on regulations, burdening the economy needlessly. We chart this problem every year in our Ten Thousand Commandments report.
The power of regulators now raises constitutional concerns. Regulators are often unaccountable, and their insulation from the checks and balances of the constitutional system suggests that they may in effect form a fourth branch of government. The use of guidance documents to avoid rulemaking procedures, for instance, can amount to government by decree. Deregulation is therefore essential to restore good constitutional order.
CEI advocates for both overall regulatory reform – changing the ways in which rules are made to make them more transparent and easier to remove – and for specific regulatory changes. Recent successes include recognition of our concerns in Executive Orders promoting deregulation and curtailing the use of guidance, and in the reflection of our comments in rules promulgated by agencies such as the Department of Labor and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Deregulation Issue Areas
Featured Posts
Blog
CFPB’s Dodd-Frank Race and Gender Data Collection Mandates Will Harm Financial Inclusion
In mid-2020, on the 10th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul being rammed through Congress and signed by then-President Obama, I catalogued the damage…
News Release
Fed Plans for Central Bank Digital Currency Pose Big Risk to Financial Sector, Economy
The US Federal Reserve today published a discussion paper on central bank digital currencies or CBDCs, signaling policymakers’ ambitions to start one. CEI expert Paul Jossey, author of…
Blog
As Numbers Stagnate, Unions Continue to Look to Congress For Salvation
The Department of Labor’s latest statistics confirm that the union movement in the U.S. remains stagnant and slowly declining. Only 10.3 percent of U.S.
Studies
The High Costs of the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act
Concerns about plastics waste in the world’s oceans have raised genuine issues about the impact of plastics on the environment. In response, Sen. Jeff Merkley…
How Plastics Benefit Wildlife and the Environment
Several proposals designed to end America’s so-called addiction to plastics are currently pending in Congress. They include the Break-Free from Plastics Act (H.R. 2238, S.
Ten Thousand Commandments 2021
View Full Report Here Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and…
Blog
Comments on Department of Labor Pension ESG Rule
At the end of last year, the Department of Labor (DOL) published a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking to rewrite rules on pension fund…
Six Myths about Bitcoin Energy Use
Newsweek: Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy by 2020 Bloomberg: What if there were a safe digital currency…
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. Inflation hit a 40-year high last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from French dressing freedom to…
News
Biden Energy Department Blocks Faster Dishwashers That Consumers Want
The Biden administration today undid a useful, consumer-friendly reform put in place by Biden’s predecessor, reinstating energy restrictions that make household dishwashers take much longer…
Inflation Hits 40 Year High, but Policymakers Can Fix It
Inflation is up, again, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports today. The Federal Reserve has a clear job to do, but Congress and President…
Revived FTC Antitrust Suit Against Facebook Could Put Chill on Innovative Acquisitions in Tech Industry
WASHINGTON – A federal judge today reversed an earlier decision and permitted a case filed against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to…
Op-Eds
City Journal
The Pandemic Job Shuffle
Policymaking involves tradeoffs. As the Covid-19 pandemic started in the U.S. in early 2020, governments chose to impose lockdowns and other restrictions in an effort…
The Wall Street Journal
A Regulatory Burden for Every Room of Your House
Skyrocketing inflation, empty store shelves, rising crime and endless Covid restrictions have been grabbing headlines, but lesser-noticed regulatory mischief from the Biden administration may prove…
National Review
The Fight for the FDIC
While the downfall of “Build Back Better” has been getting a lot of attention, it was not the only Washington policy drama…
Staff & Scholars
John Berlau
- Banking and Finance
- Deregulation
- Financial Regulation
Clyde Wayne Crews
Vice President for Policy and Senior Fellow
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Sean Higgins
Research Fellow
- Deregulation
- Labor and Employment
Sam Kazman
General Counsel
- Antitrust
- Automobiles and Roads
- Banking and Finance
Kent Lassman
President and CEO
- Capitalism
- Deregulation
- Innovation
Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment
Angela Logomasini
Senior Fellow
- Chemical Risk
- Consumer Freedom
- Energy and Environment
Michelle Minton
Senior Fellow
- Consumer Freedom
- Consumer Product Safety
- Consumer Well-Being
Iain Murray
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Trade and International
Ivan Osorio
Editorial Director
- Labor and Employment
Ryan Radia
Research Fellow and Regulatory Counsel
- Intellectual Property
- Media, Speech and Internet Freedoms
- Privacy and Cybersecurity
Fran Smith
Adjunct Fellow
- Trade and International
Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
- Automobiles and Roads
- Aviation
- Business and Government
Ryan Young
Senior Fellow
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform