Browse regulations

Customs regulation imposing mandatory labeling and inspection requirements on imported tobacco, alcohol, wool, fur, and textile products, with procedures for bond, supervision, and penalties.

Enforces paternalistic product disclosure mandates that exceed legitimate fraud prevention, imposing high compliance costs and administrative burdens that disproportionately harm small importers and consumers. The unseen costs include reduced competition, higher prices, and a bloated compliance industry. These New Deal-era interventions violate limited government principles and should be replaced by market-driven solutions and enforcement of existing fraud laws.

This regulation mandates a specific formula for calculating discount rates used in cost-benefit analysis of federal and federally-assisted water resources projects. The rate is based on the average yield of 15+ year Treasury securities, rounded to the nearest 1/8 percent, with annual changes capped at 0.25%. It applies to projects submitted after 1968, with transition protections for projects already in advanced planning stages.

This regulation imposes an unnecessary one-size-fits-all mandate that distorts economic analysis by forcing all water projects to use a uniform discount rate irrespective of their unique time horizons and risk profiles. The arbitrary rounding and annual change caps introduce additional distortions. The proper discount rate should reflect the actual cost of capital and opportunity cost for each specific project, allowing flexibility that this rigid formula prohibits. As a relic of 1968, it exemplifies outdated centralized planning that undermines rational resource allocation and increases compliance burden without commensurate benefit.

Regulation permits carriers to prepare and publish financial statements for non-regulatory reports based on GAAP with authoritative support, provided any variance from the Commission's prescribed accounting rules is disclosed in footnotes. The Commission's own reports must follow its rules.

Deletion could force carriers to abandon GAAP for public reports or maintain dual accounting systems, raising compliance costs that harm consumers. This rule uniquely balances regulatory oversight with market-driven standards, allowing efficient reporting while ensuring transparency via footnotes—a balance unlikely without explicit rulemaking.

Regulation mandates electronic filing procedures for carriers (likely pipelines) seeking to change property account depreciation rates, requiring extensive documentation including engineering maps, throughput data, capacity information, and detailed justification, with certification that filings are sent to shippers and subscribers. Current rates remain in effect until Commission approval.

This regulation imposes significant compliance costs on carriers—especially small businesses—through burdensome documentation and filing requirements for what are essentially private accounting decisions. Depreciation rates are fundamentally a business judgment about asset life and should be determined by companies and their shareholders, not federal bureaucrats. The $14,000 hidden tax per household from regulatory compliance includes these wasteful procedural mandates that yield no clear public benefit beyond potential bureaucratic monitoring, creating a chilling effect on business innovation and imposing disproportionate costs on smaller operators.

Mandates detailed cost-of-service filings for oil pipeline carriers establishing or changing rates, including specified base/test periods, comprehensive statements on costs, returns, taxes, rate base, AFUDC, revenues, and asset retirement obligations.

Imposes massive compliance costs that burden consumers, favors large incumbents, raises barriers to entry, and distorts incentives via cost-plus rate setting (Averch-Johnson effect), leading to overinvestment, inefficiency, reduced supply, and higher prices. Federal overreach violates Tenth Amendment; such natural monopoly regulation is better left to states or replaced by market competition.

Requires pipeline carriers to electronically file with the Commission any quotations for government petroleum transport at reduced rates, concurrent with agency submission, with specific numbering and supersession rules.

Imposes unnecessary compliance costs that disproportionately harm small businesses, distorts market pricing by treating government contracts differently, and represents bureaucratic overreach that could be eliminated without affecting legitimate government procurement functions.

Regulation governing pipeline companies whose proposed rate increases are suspended by the Interstate Commerce Commission. If the suspension period expires without a final order, rates may take effect pending compliance with recordkeeping and refund requirements. Pipelines must maintain detailed revenue accounts by shipper and billing period, and if rates are later found unjustified, must refund the excess with interest (based on prime rate, compounded quarterly) and bear all refund costs.

This represents classic regulatory overreach that distorts market price signals and imposes massive compliance burdens on businesses. The detailed accounting requirements create a hidden tax on pipeline operations—costs that are inevitably passed to consumers anyway. The underlying premise that government bureaucrats can second-guess private rate-setting assumes knowledge no central plannerpossesses, violating Mises' calculation problem. These regulations protect established shippers through rate suppression, reducing incentives for pipeline investment and capacity expansion that would lower costs through competition. The interest formula compounded quarterly arbitrarily picks winners and losers. Rate regulation of private transportation services should be left to contracts and state law; federal involvement via the expired ICC framework represents unconstitutional Commerce Clause overreach that undermines federalism and economic liberty.

Requires electric utilities to develop and file plans for accommodating power shortages and to report anticipated shortages to FERC, state regulators, and wholesale customers, with an option to incorporate these requirements into rate schedules to avoid separate filings.

Federal reporting mandates duplicate state oversight and private contracts, imposing compliance costs that burden consumers and small utilities; violates Tenth Amendment by federalizing traditionally state-regulated energy markets; reinforces bureaucratic expansion that crowds out market-based solutions to reliability.

This regulation mandates record retention schedules, storage standards, and destruction procedures for public utilities and licensees under the Commission's jurisdiction. It requires designated supervisory officials, protection from damage, indexing for access, and includes exceptions for rate cases and litigation.

The rule imposes compliance costs—administrative burden, storage, and personnel—that are passed to consumers as higher rates. It duplicates requirements from GAAP, the IRS, and state regulators, adding complexity without benefit. The federal mandate supplants business judgment and state authority, violating federalism and free enterprise. FERC can protect its interests through subpoena power in specific proceedings, making this blanket requirement unnecessary.

Procedural regulation governing applications to vacate federal land reservations for power sites. Specifies filing with BLM (non-National Forest lands) or Forest Service (National Forest lands), requires detailed land descriptions, and includes 1922/1937 determinations allowing entry on certain power site lands and permitting grazing under conditions with automatic termination upon licensing.

Obsolete procedural relic from 1920s-1930s that adds compliance costs and bureaucratic complexity while perpetuating unconstitutional federal control over land use. Unseen costs include legal uncertainty from discretionary agency power, distortion of land markets, and entrenchment of the federal land control labyrinth that should be dismantled under Tenth Amendment principles of state sovereignty and private property rights.

Requires filing a detailed declaration of intention with FERC for proposed hydroelectric projects, including technical data on project design, maps, flow curves, and operational plans.

Heavy compliance costs and technical barriers favor large corporations over small innovators; federal intrusion into state water policy violates federalism; the data mandates distort project design and add little value beyond private due diligence.

Regulation governs transfer and leasing of federal licenses for energy projects, requiring Commission approval based on public interest and transferee qualifications, with specific documentation and timing requirements.

Creates unnecessary transaction costs, delays, and uncertainty through the vague 'public interest' standard and redundant qualification review. These barriers inhibit efficient capital reallocation and market competition while enabling regulatory capture.

Bans eight phthalates above 0.1% in children's toys and child care articles, mandates third-party testing for compliance, and exempts specific plastics and additives deemed safe.

Third-party testing imposes substantial costs on manufacturers, especially small businesses. The exemption list invites regulatory capture and stifles innovation. Product safety is a state concern; market-based solutions like liability and certification would be more effective and liberty-preserving.

Prohibits manufacture, sale, distribution, or importation of children's toys (age ≤12) and child care articles (age ≤3) containing specified phthalates above 0.1% concentration.

Heavy compliance costs burden manufacturers, especially small businesses; stifles innovation in material science; raises consumer prices; and exceeds federal authority under the Commerce Clause. Unseen effects include reduced product variety, substitution with potentially riskier untested chemicals, and undermining parental autonomy. Market mechanisms like liability and private certification can address safety more efficiently.

Mandates a federal safety standard for water bead toys, incorporating ASTM F963-23 and adding specific performance requirements (size expansion after hydration, acrylamide extraction limits) and detailed labeling rules to prevent choking, ingestion, aspiration, insertion hazards, and chemical exposure.

Compliance costs are substantial, especially for small manufacturers, raising barriers to entry and protecting incumbent firms. The rule's prescriptive details—from exact font sizes to complex testing protocols—stifle innovation and impose a one-size-fits-all federal mandate that infringes on state authority under the Tenth Amendment. The unseen consequence is a less competitive toy market with higher prices and fewer choices for families, while the same safety objectives could be more efficiently achieved through state-level regulation and tort liability.