Regulatory reform is a broad and all-encompassing policy goal of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It is essential for entrepreneurship, innovation, and prosperity to flourish. We advocate for reform by surveying the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations. We show how they affect the U.S. economy at large and making proposals to policy makers to enact reforms.

There are two main areas in which Congress can enact meaningful reform. The first is to rein in regulatory guidance documents, which we refer to as “regulatory dark matter,” whereby agencies regulate through Federal Register notices, guidance documents, and other means outside standard rulemaking procedure. The second is to enact a series of reforms to increase agency transparency and accountability of all regulation and guidance. These include annual regulatory report cards for rulemaking agencies and regulatory cost estimates from the Office of Management and Budget for more than just a small subset of rules.

​In 2019, President Trump signed two executive orders aimed at stopping the practice of agencies using guidance documents to effectively implement policy without going through the legally required notice and comment process.

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City Journal

Roll It Back

Medicaid, the federal-state entitlement for the poor, now provides health insurance to more than one in four Americans. Enrollments surged after the Affordable Care Act…

Regulatory Reform

Americans for Tax Reform

Q&A on Credit Card Regulation

Americans for Tax Reform has been consistently opposed to government regulation of debit and credit card transactions.  Last year, ATR opposed the Credit Card Competition…

Regulatory Reform

National Review

Puerto Rico Libre

The first airplane my father ever boarded was the one that took him from Puerto Rico to New York to attend the United States Military Academy…

Deregulation

Products

Free to Prosper: Inflation

In 2022, inflation reached its highest levels in 40 years and became a hot-button economic issue. Confusion surrounding the causes of inflation has resulted in confusing…

Deregulation

Clyde Wayne Crews

Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies

  • Business and Government
  • Consumer Freedom
  • Deregulation

Ryan Young

Senior Economist

  • Antitrust
  • Business and Government
  • Regulatory Reform

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

Founder; Chairman Emeritus

  • Automobiles and Roads
  • Aviation
  • Business and Government

Sam Kazman

Counsel Emeritus

  • Antitrust
  • Automobiles and Roads
  • Banking and Finance

Marlo Lewis, Jr.

Senior Fellow

  • Climate
  • Energy
  • Energy and Environment