Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Refrigeration products and off-road vehicle debris
Iran fired 180 missiles at Israel. Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina. Longshoremen went on strike. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent. The…
Blog
Longshoremen stood down when they realized wrecking the economy wasn’t popular
Thursday’s announcement that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was ending its strike at east coast and Gulf of Mexico ports after…
Blog
White House has several options in dockworkers strike, none of them good
President Biden likes to call himself “Blue Collar Joe” and declare his support for union workers, but his administration has been…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Reforming red tape in the states with James Broughel
In this week’s episode we cover striking dock workers at US ports, free-market innovation in healthcare, and the changing pattern of federal…
Blog
Adam Smith on health policy
Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute published my OnPoint essay, “The Innovation Imperative: What Adam Smith Can Tell Us About Health.” This was adapted from…
Blog
The real issue in the port strike: Automation
Most news reports on the east coast dockworker’s strike are focused on the issue of wages, which obscures the real reason for the strike:…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Bent coins and Irish potato taxes
The leader of the Hezbollah terrorist group died in an Israeli military strike. The 2024 Federal Register is poised to reach 80,000 pages this week.
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: How to sue the SEC with Nick Morgan
In this week’s episode we cover entrepreneurship in Africa, a lawsuit over “affordable luxury” handbags, and European deforestation rules. Our interview…
Blog
Iowa’s ‘Lean-in’ approach to successful permitting reform
The State of Iowa has made significant strides in improving its environmental permitting processes, thanks to innovative reforms spearheaded by the state’s Department of Natural…
Blog
Pen and phone power: How presidential documents are changing the rules
Presidential executive orders and directives have long played a pivotal role in shaping federal policies and regulations. As President Obama famously remarked in 2014, “I’ve…
Blog
Teamsters non-endorsement: Outlier or sign of things to come?
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’s internal poll on who to endorse in the 2024 presidential election was so lopsidedly in favor of Republican nominee Donald…
Blog
Congress decides, not agencies: The significance of the REINvented REINS Act
It’s been repeated a million times that in our constitutional republic, lawmaking power belongs to Congress. But over the years, this authority has increasingly shifted…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Pedestrians’ heads and avocado maturity
CEI celebrated its 40th anniversary at its annual Julian Simon Memorial Award Dinner. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates. Agencies issued new regulations…
Blog
Switzerland should reverse its nuclear power plant ban
Despite nuclear energy’s myriad benefits, many countries—and several US states—maintain bans on the construction of new nuclear power plants. This phenomenon is especially puzzling in…
Blog
Magatte Wade to accept Julian L. Simon Memorial Award and share her story at the CEI dinner
According to demographers, about one-quarter of the world’s population is expected to be African at the middle of this century. Many are currently quite poor. …
Blog
House expected to consider legislation to block EPA’s ‘EV mandate’
This week the House is expected to consider a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) April 2024 rule…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Economic mobility in the 50 states with Gonzalo Schwarz
In this week’s episode we cover poll results on corporate social responsibility, the plight of California landlords, hard times for cable…
Blog
Teamsters’ non-endorsement exposes internal divisions
The announcement that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters will not endorse a presidential candidate this cycle is a sign of the internal struggles within…
Blog
Turning point on interest rates
The Federal Reserve went for the big cut at its interest rate meeting this week. There was uncertainty on whether the federal funds rate…
Blog
DOJ’s flawed case against AI’s incredible rent machine
In Tom Smith and The Incredible Bread Machine, the famous political poem about an inventor at first hailed for his machine that slashes the…
Blog
CEI’s The Surge: HUD hiking housing costs, wind and solar subsidies, and more
If you are interested in analysis and perspective on current energy and environmental issues, then we encourage you to subscribe to this new publication…
Blog
Political review of agency adjudication and recommendations for reform
Abstract Formal agency adjudication reserves the final decision-making authority to the political leadership of the agency. Many organizations and watchdogs have taken issue with how…
Blog
Why Europe’s ‘Farm to Fork’ policies collapsed
The new European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, will soon be tasked with “simplifying” agricultural regulations within the Union. “The Commission is…
Blog
Some thoughts on Constitution Day
As I drove into work today, it occurred to me: we so often take for granted the extraordinary power that the automobile gives us. Once…
Blog
Hey Fed! Don’t worsen devastating Durbin debit card price controls
Consumers using their debit and credit cards just can’t catch a break these days from politicians, bureaucrats, and big retailers pushing Big Government ripoffs. In…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Robocalls and toddler carriers
Culture warriors falsely accused immigrants of eating people’s pets. Donald Trump discussed the issue in his presidential debate with Kamala Harris. The final…
Blog
Removing taxes on overtime would have only marginal impact
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposal to remove the taxes on overtime would likely have little effect on the workers and the economy. It…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Why we can’t have nice things with Eric Boehm
In this week’s episode we cover weaponized financial regulation, poverty policy beyond handouts, and Italy’s call to slow down the electric…
Blog
Proposed USDA rule disregards recent Supreme Court rulings
The first two of the four priorities the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) lists on the homepage of its website are tackling social justice,…
Blog
Just 5 percent of private sector workers voted for their unions
Imagine if you lived in a country where a vote held decades previous determined which party held control of the government and people had little…
Blog
A cry for Yelp or crocodile tears?
Online review platform Yelp filed a private antitrust suit against Google last month, accusing the tech company of monopolizing the “local search services market”…
Blog
Regulatory relief, not subsidies, can make housing more affordable
Housing affordability has become a major issue – and for good reason given skyrocketing home prices and high mortgage rates coming at a time when…
Blog
Scaling deregulation: Can Trump achieve a 10-for-1 rule elimination?
In a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Donald Trump pledged if re-elected to eliminate—not two rules for every one added as he…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: Nuclear casks and radiofrequency toothbrushes
It was a four-day week due to Labor Day. The unemployment rate declined from 4.3 percent to 4.2 percent. The Biden administration signaled it…
Blog
Government efficiency commission: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Donald Trump is proposing a new government efficiency commission and he wants Elon Musk to lead it. Like most campaign proposals, it does not…
Blog
Will Big Nuclear make a comeback?
Following Georgia Power Plant Vogtle Unit 4’s completion and coming online earlier this year, there aren’t any outstanding large nuclear reactors under construction in the United…
Blog
Steeling politics
Politics ruins everything. Right now, it is ruining America’s steel industry. The Biden administration, with plenty of bipartisan support, has announced it will block…
Blog
Junk science behind federal appliance regs about to get junkier
The Biden-Harris administration has embarked on a wave of anti-consumer home appliance regulations over the last several years. Each was justified in part by overblown…
Blog
The problem with power subsidies
A new paper from the Energy Alliance highlights one of the biggest causes of rising unreliability on the electricity grid: subsidies. The report’s author, Bill Peacock,…
Blog
Price controls: right problem, wrong solution
In an op-ed being syndicated by Inside Sources, I take a look at Kamala Harris’s price control proposals for groceries and housing:…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: The future of streaming with Geoff Manne
In this week’s episode we cover social media censorship, automation at US ports, and the property market crash in China. Our…
Blog
Congress needs to fight the bureaucracy – and itself
After testifying before the House Committee on Administration in July on Congress in a Post-Chevron World, I received a series of Questions for…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: marijuana scheduling and do-not-call fees
Rather than allow more housing to be built to combat rising rents, the Justice Department sued RealPage, a rent-listing service. CEI’s James Broughel released…
Blog
Proof of price gouging is harder to find than Bigfoot
The concept of “price gouging” is a lot like Bigfoot. Lots of people think it exists and have been chasing it for decades. Yet actual…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Searching for digital privacy with Jen Huddleston
In this week’s episode we cover the new book What Went Wrong with Capitalism, the problem with price controls (via Brian…
Blog
The power of proceduralism: Lessons from New York’s Uniform Procedures Act
Within the labyrinth of environmental regulation, good intentions often pave the way to bureaucratic nightmares. But amidst the tangle of red tape, there occasionally emerges…
Blog
ESG policy trembles in our post-Chevron world
The US Supreme Court recently rendered one of the most historic decisions in administrative law in the consolidated cases of Loper Bright v. Raimondo…
Blog
Congressional Review Act votes could claw back some of Biden’s regulations
As the Biden-Harris baton-passing administration approaches the final stretch of its first term, a critical deadline has passed that could render subsequent major federal rules…
Blog
This week in ridiculous regulations: energy labeling and FCC rules for homework
There are now more than 2,000 new final regulations on the year. The Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago. A labor market statistic caused…
Blog
Labor issues
Labor Day was established in the late 1800s to celebrate workers and their achievements. Back then, manual labor was the dominant type of work for…