Browse regulations

Implements USMCA customs procedures for claiming preferential tariff treatment, including certification of origin requirements, record-keeping obligations, and drawback claims for goods traded between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

Imposes substantial compliance costs—record-keeping, certifications, and administrative burdens—that function as a hidden tax on importers, with disproportionate impact on small businesses. The regulatory complexity creates barriers to entry, invites bureaucratic expansion, and represents managed trade rather than true free enterprise. Unilateral tariff elimination would achieve the same market access without this expensive administrative apparatus.

This regulation establishes TVA's internal procedural rules for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It defines processes for categorical exclusions, environmental assessments (EAs), and environmental impact statements (EISs), including timelines, scoping, extraordinary circumstances review, and interagency coordination. It provides specific categorical exclusions for routine TVA activities ranging from personnel actions to transmission line construction under certain size thresholds.

This procedural rule imposes significant hidden costs through delays and bureaucracy while providing minimal marginal environmental protection beyond existing state regulations and common law. The NEPA process creates perverse incentives for third parties to weaponize environmental review to block energy infrastructure development, raising costs for American families and businesses. TVA's categorical exclusion determinations involve subjective 'extraordinary circumstances' reviews that add uncertainty and delay. Americans would be better off with faster, cheaper energy infrastructure built through market mechanisms and state-level oversight, not federal procedural maze that consumes resources without demonstrable environmental benefits.

Regulation establishes the FDIC's orderly liquidation authority for broker-dealers under Dodd-Frank, defining key terms, procedures for SIPC trustee appointment, bridge broker/dealer creation, customer asset protection, claims processes, and payment priorities. It grants the FDIC extraordinary powers to stay contracts and transfer assets without consent to facilitate resolution.

This regulation implements a government bailout mechanism that creates moral hazard, distorts market discipline, and overrides private contracts. It institutionalizes 'too big to fail' for broker-dealers, allowing the FDIC to seize assets without consent and socialize losses. Orderly resolution should occur through normal bankruptcy where contractual rights are respected. The unseen costs include perpetuating fragile business models, crowding out private resolution mechanisms, and imposing regulatory burdens that protect incumbents from competition.

Exempts certain swap transactions from the mandatory trade execution requirement: (1) swaps that are part of a package transaction with primary market bond issuance, (2) swaps qualifying for other statutory or regulatory exceptions, and (3) swaps between eligible affiliate counterparties. Package transactions must be priced as one economic unit and executed simultaneously or near-simultaneously.

Exemptions increase regulatory complexity and compliance burdens while entrenching the underlying harmful Dodd-Frank framework, delaying necessary wholesale repeal and distorting market incentives through targeted carve-outs.

Exempts five unfinished manufactured fibers (nylon, spandex, viscose rayon, acrylic/modacrylic, natural rubber latex) from third-party testing for heavy metal solubility and phthalate content limits because they inherently meet these safety standards, as they contain no chemical additives beyond those required for manufacturing.

Deleting this exemption would impose unnecessary testing costs on safe materials, raising toy prices and burdening small businesses without any safety benefit. It achieves the legitimate goal of reducing regulatory burdens while protecting children, as the scientific consensus confirms these fibers pose no risk.

Establishes mandatory consumer product safety standard for expansion gates and expandable enclosures, requiring compliance with ASTM F1004-22 (June 2022). Incorporates private industry standard by reference to prevent entrapment hazards and ensure structural integrity.

Without this regulation, substandard gates could cause child entanglement/strangulation or structural failures leading to serious injury or death. Parents cannot possibly test every product's safety, creating a classic information asymmetry where only government minimum standards prevent race-to-the-bottom manufacturing. The rule of law benefit of a clear, enforceable standard outweighs modest compliance costs for a product whose failure has catastrophic, irreversible consequences. Parents would be worse off without assurance that any gate sold meets basic safety requirements.

Licensing regime for private remote sensing space systems requiring government permission before operation, with tiered conditions based on data uniqueness, national security restrictions, annual certifications, and government access rights.

Prior restraint on commercial space innovation; creates barriers to entry favoring incumbents; imposes heavy compliance burden enabling regulatory capture through interagency MOU; unclear national security standards allow arbitrary denials; restricts data dissemination and requires consent from other satellite owners, chilling competition and violating free enterprise principles.

This regulation establishes federal agency policies for conformity assessment (testing, certification, inspection) to meet regulatory requirements. It mandates agencies coordinate assessment activities with other government levels and private sector, use voluntary consensus standards, avoid duplication, and designate Agency Standards Executives. The rule provides guidance on achieving regulatory objectives efficiently while supporting trade obligations.

Deleting this would be counterproductive. It explicitly promotes regulatory efficiency, coordination, and use of private-sector standards—key reforms that reduce compliance costs for businesses. Without this framework, agencies would likely duplicate efforts, create conflicting requirements, and rely more on government-unique standards rather than market-based solutions, increasing the hidden tax burden on Americans. The regulation constrains rather than expands agency discretion by requiring justification and consideration of alternatives.

Provides lifetime medical monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment for former NASA astronauts and payload specialists who have flown in space, for conditions associated with spaceflight. NASA serves as secondary payer to other insurance/coverage, with no cost-sharing for eligible individuals. Program excludes commercial space tourists, foreign astronauts, and NASA employees who never flew.

This is special-interest welfare for a narrow occupational group, violating limited government principles. Astronauts voluntarily accepted known risks and should rely on standard federal employee benefits, workers' compensation, or private insurance—not a dedicated taxpayer-funded lifetime medical program. The government has no constitutional duty to provide ongoing occupational healthcare to former employees beyond what's available to all citizens.

Establishes the Pilot Records Database (PRD) requiring aviation operators to report pilot employment, training, disciplinary, and drug/alcohol records, and mandating review of these records before permitting a pilot to begin service.

Deletion increases risk of catastrophic aviation accidents by allowing pilots with undisclosed safety issues to move between employers unchecked. Federal coordination ensures comprehensive, standardized access to critical safety data that private alternatives would fail to provide due to fragmentation, free-rider problems, and the interstate nature of aviation.

Establishes comprehensive capital adequacy standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), including risk-weighted asset calculations, regulatory capital definitions, leverage requirements, quarterly reporting to FHFA, and enforcement mechanisms. Contains extensive technical definitions and grants FHFA broad discretionary authority to adjust calculations and require additional capital.

Deletion would eliminate the last line of defense against taxpayer-funded bailouts of these government-sponsored enterprises. Fannie and Freddie already benefit from implicit government guarantees, creating moral hazard that would lead them to drastically reduce capital ratios, increase risk-taking, and flood the market with dubious mortgages—repeating the 2008 crisis. The $14,000 per household regulatory compliance cost cited is trivial compared to the $190 billion+ bailout taxpayers suffered in 2008-2012. These standards, while complex, impose market discipline that would otherwise be absent due to the GSEs' government backing.

Regulation F implements the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, imposing extensive restrictions on third-party debt collectors' communications with consumers (time/place limits, cease-communication rules), third parties, prohibiting harassment and deception, requiring specific disclosures, and mandating detailed record retention.

Imposes a massive $2 trillion+ annual compliance burden nationwide while federalizing debt collection—a Tenth Amendment state power. Duplicates existing fraud and harassment laws, adds crushing record-keeping requirements, and uses vague 'unfair' standards that create regulatory overreach. Raises barriers to entry that disproportionately harm small collectors (30% higher per-employee costs) while protecting large incumbents. Consumers would be better protected by state-level laws and tort remedies for actual harm, not this one-size-fits-all federal regime that raises credit costs for all Americans.

Regulation establishes open meeting requirements for the Farm Credit Administration Board, implementing the Government in the Sunshine Act. It defines terms, sets public observation procedures without requiring advance notice (though requested), specifies exemptions for closed meetings (national security, personnel, trade secrets, law enforcement, etc.), requires recording of closed meetings, and mandates public availability of meeting records. It creates administrative procedures for transparency while allowing limited closures.

Americans would be worse off without this transparency framework, as the Farm Credit Administration could operate in secrecy, shielding its decisions affecting $400B+ in agricultural credit from public scrutiny. The regulation achieves accountability through specific procedural safeguards: mandatory public notice, recorded votes for closures, General Counsel certification, and preserved minutes. These mechanisms create enforceable transparency that would be difficult to replicate ad hoc, preventing regulatory capture and ensuring oversight of an agency that wields significant economic power over America's farmers and rural communities.

Regulation classifies state nonmember insured banks into five categories and requires FDIC prior written consent before changing business character. It also sets complex requirements for banks seeking trust powers and imposes detailed restrictions on mutual-to-stock conversions including voting requirements, stock repurchase limits, and benefit plan regulations.

This regulation imposes significant compliance costs and bureaucratic hurdles on state-chartered banks, restricting their ability to adapt to market conditions and innovate. The prior consent requirement fundamentally violates economic liberty by requiring federal permission to change business activities. The complex mutual-to-stock conversion rules create high transaction costs, protect incumbent management, and interfere with corporate governance decisions. States are fully capable of regulating their own banks without federal micromanagement, and FDIC's insurance interests can be protected through simpler means like risk-based premiums rather than prior approval gates.

FDIC regulation implementing sections 24(j) and 27 of the FDI Act to give state-chartered banks and foreign branches parity with national banks on interest rates and host state law application. It preempts restrictive state usury laws with a federal floor, broadly defines interest, and locks loan terms at origination.

Deleting would subject interstate state-chartered banks to lower state usury caps, reducing competition with national banks, raising borrowing costs, and limiting credit access. The regulation efficiently achieves parity by establishing a uniform federal standard that prevents state protectionism and avoids a patchwork of conflicting laws that would increase compliance burdens and stifle interstate banking.