Tag: regulations

Biden’s Record-Breaking Regulatory Run

The fourth and final year of the Biden administration included record levels of federal regulations—including more than a dozen new rules finalized in the last hours before Inauguration Day.

Former President Joe Biden’s final year in office “set a blistering pace,” writes Clyde Wayne Crews, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), in a piece for Forbes. During 2024, the Biden administration created 3,248 new rules, by Crews’ count, and finished out the year by publishing 107,262 pages in the Federal Register, the weekly publication that lists all new rules, proposed rules, and other public notices.

The number of pages in the Federal Register is a blunt, imperfect way to track the activities of the administrative state. Still, it offers a useful view of historical regulatory trends, and Biden’s output in 2024 is the highest total ever recorded.

But the Biden administration didn’t stop when the new year hit. In the first three weeks of 2025, Crews notes in a blog post for CEI, the outgoing administration issued 243 new rules across 7,641 pages of the Federal Register. That includes 15 final rules and 23 proposed rules that weren’t published until Tuesday, January 21—the day after Trump was sworn into office—because they’d been wrapped up over the previous weekend.

That final flurry of regulatory activity cemented “Biden’s legacy as a prolific regulator,” writes Crews.

Not only did the number of regulations approved by Biden set new records, but the costs associated with those rules soared to new heights too. His administration issued $1.8 trillion in cumulative regulatory costs over four years, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum (AAF), which tracks the estimated regulatory costs published in the Federal Register.

That shatters the previous record, set by the Obama administration, which over eight years pushed through regulations costing $493.6 billion.

The biggest single regulation issued by the Biden administration was the new tailpipe emissions for automobiles that are scheduled to take effect in 2027. That alone will cost more than $870 billion. Even without that big hit, however, the Biden administration would have easily landed in first place.

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Every Bureaucrat Destroys 138 Jobs

An Auburn University study says every single regulator destroys fully 138 private sector jobs every year you keep him on the job.

With nearly 300,000 federal regulators, the shock is that we still have any jobs at all.

The Two Scariest Words in the English Language

A lot of the excitement around the Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — focuses on the dollars saved. But more important is all the things the federal government destroys with those dollars.

Specifically, the millions of jobs destroyed by the two scariest words in the English language: federal regulators.

A few weeks ago I mentioned how DOGE under Elon and Vivek is taking aim at the regulatory mothership that strangles the American economy and fuels the totalitarian administrative state — you may remember it from Covid.

A mother ship that is oddly enough unconstitutional according to a pair of recent Supreme Court decisions — Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo and West Virginia v EPA.

I asserted this could unleash the economy like nothing we’ve seen in the past century.

And the reason is because it’s hard to overstate just how destructive regulations are. 

Every Regulator Destroys 138 Jobs

One 2017 study by the Phoenix Center and Auburn University found that every single full-time regulator destroys 158 jobs. 

GDP-adjusted to today, that translates to $16.5 million of economic output. For a hundred-thousand dollar bureaucrat.

This lost output is made of jobs and businesses that were never started. Or were stunted by strangling regulations — which are generally bought by big corporations specifically to strangle small competitors.

Along with mom and pops chased into bankruptcy as collateral damage to new regulations — say, a diner forced to spend $30,000 on a low-energy exhaust fan.

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Congress ‘Can Regulate Virtually Anything’

Two years after Harvard gave him the boot and three years before Congress banned LSD, Timothy Leary set out on a road trip from Millbrook, New York, in a rented station wagon. The 45-year-old psychologist and psychedelic enthusiast was accompanied by his girlfriend, Rosemary Woodruff, and his two teenaged children, Susan and Jack. They had planned a month-long family vacation in Yucatan, Mexico, after which Leary and Woodruff would stay behind to work on his newly commissioned autobiography. Leary and his companions arrived in Laredo, Texas, on the evening of December 22, 1965, and crossed the international bridge to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

At the customs station on the Mexican side of the bridge, Leary recalled in his 1983 memoir Flashbacks, he learned that the visa he needed would not be approved until the next day. That turned out to be the least of his troubles.

“All the grass is out of the car, right?” Leary asked as he started driving the station wagon back across the bridge. Jack had flushed his, but Woodruff said she had been unable to retrieve her “silver box” of pot from her bag because “there were two uniformed porters leaning against the car.” Since trying to toss the contraband off the side of the bridge seemed inadvisable, Susan hid it in her clothing.

At the inspection point on the U.S. side, Leary explained that he “didn’t enter Mexico” and had nothing to declare. After a suspicious customs agent picked up what looked like a cannabis seed from the car floor near Leary’s feet, the encounter escalated into searches of the vehicle, the passengers, and their luggage. A “personal search” of Susan discovered what the U.S. Supreme Court would later describe as “a silver snuff box containing semi-refined marihuana and three partially smoked marihuana cigarettes”—about half an ounce, all told.

Leary claimed ownership of the stash, which earned him a 30-year prison sentence. That astonishingly severe penalty was based on two federal charges: transportation of illegally imported marijuana and failure to pay a transfer tax on the contraband.

Those puzzling charges provide a window on the constitutionally dubious origins of federal drug prohibition, which was smuggled into the U.S. Code disguised as tax legislation. Federal gun control laws followed a similar route, expanding along with conventional conceptions of congressional power.

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E.U. Regulations Created a Port Wine Black Market

People have been making wine in the verdant hills of northern Portugal’s Douro Valley for nearly 2,000 years. Nowadays, the region is home to more than 19,000 grape farmers and 1,000 companies tending terraced vineyards that tower above the Douro River below.

Hundreds of these vineyards are small, often family-owned, properties called quintas, many of which produce port: a syrupy, sweet fortified wine. As a European Union–protected designation of origin product (similar to French Champagne or Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano), the production, labeling, and sale of port are heavily regulated—sometimes to the detriment of the small-scale operators keeping the cultural practice alive.

When I visited the Douro Valley this fall, one quinta owner shared that she couldn’t officially sell port because of burdensome government regulations. All port sellers are required to keep at least 75,000 liters in reserve at all times, she explained—a standard that large producers can meet, but one that might bankrupt a small quinta like hers. In effect, she could only participate in this important cultural heritage as a black market seller.

Francisco Montenegro, owner of the Douro Valley–based Aneto Wines, notes that would-be port sellers have to grapple with several regulations that make it difficult for them to enter the market. On top of the 75,000-liter stock minimum, port producers are allowed to sell or market only one-third of their output, “thus forcing the producer to let [two-thirds] of their wines age.” They have to register under a specific tax status “as they work with spirits,” which requires them to “pay more customs taxes.” Government regulations also mandate that producers “wait at least 3 or 4 years if they want to bottle a normal tawny” port, Montenegro says.

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California Man First to be Charged With Smuggling Greenhouse Gases Into US

A San Diego man was arrested Monday for smuggling greenhouse gasses into the United States from Mexico.

Federal prosecutors say this is the first criminal case of its kind in the country.

The indictment alleges Michael Hart, 58, imported hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) – a chemical compound commonly used for refrigeration, air-conditioning and aerosols – from Mexico and then sold them for a profit, which violates regulations created in 2020 ostensibly intended to “slow climate change.”

“This is the first prosecution in the United States to include charges related to the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act),” said a press release from the Southern District of California. “The AIM Act prohibits the importation of HFCs, commonly used as refrigerants, without allowances issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”

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Biden’s New Regulation Could Make Up to 1 Million Jobs Vanish, According to Manufacturing Leader

The Biden administration is in the process of putting in place a rule one manufacturing leader says could kill off a million manufacturing jobs.

Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, made his prediction in an advance copy of his annual state of manufacturing address, according to Fox Business.

The remarks said that while Biden claims to support manufacturers, “what he won’t tell you is that his federal agencies are, at this very moment, working to undermine his manufacturing legacy — those agencies are undermining your success.

“In fact, just two weeks ago, they announced one big regulation that could wipe out up to 1 million jobs. It’s referred to as National Ambient Air Quality Standards or PM2.5,” he said.

“It’s not the name that matters. It’s the consequences. It’s stricter than rules they have even in Europe,” he wrote.

“And in vast portions of the country, we will barely be able to build new manufacturing facilities as a result,” Timmons said.

The rule imposes a stricter air quality standard on what’s known as fine particle pollution.

“Michigan would be one of the states hit hardest. And if new manufacturing investments dry up, that spills over to the rest of the state economy,” Timmons said.

“It affects the family trying to sell their home, the teacher hoping for new investments in schools, the students looking for job opportunities here in the state,” Timmons said

Timmons said that forcing manufacturers to move to other nations defeats the goal of clean air rules.

“And to what end? You cannot solve the world’s environmental challenges by driving manufacturing investment away from the United States to countries with lower standards,” he said.

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Good Times, Bad Times: Eviction Edition

Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. Despite the ink still wet on many state-level YIMBY reforms prodding local governments to allow housing, we’re already witnessing a concerted counter-revolution from the forces of local control. This week’s stories include:

  • Slow-growth activists in the Boston-adjacent suburb of Milton, Massachusetts, have successfully overturned state-required zoning reforms that allowed apartments near the town’s train stations.
  • Local governments in Florida are trying to defang a new state law allowing residential high-rises in commercial zones with lawsuits and regulatory obstructions.
  • A lawsuit against Arlington, Virginia’s exceedingly modest “missing middle” reforms that were passed last year trundles on.

But first, our lead item is a short take on how America’s overregulated, undersupplied housing market turns good things, like economic growth, into bad things, like more evictions.

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Missouri Legislation Would Impose Restrictions On Intoxicating Hemp Products, Sparking Clash Over How To Regulate

Missouri lawmakers have heard hours of heated testimony at two hearings in the last week over bills aiming to regulate intoxicating hemp products that get people high the same as marijuana.

Currently there’s no state or federal law saying teenagers or children can’t buy products, such as delta-8 drinks, or that stores can’t sell them to minors—though some stores and vendors have taken it upon themselves to impose age restrictions of 21 and up.

And there’s no requirement to list potential effects on the label or test how much THC is actually in them.

“There’s zero reason why these THC products should not be treated like any other THC product in our state,” said state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance, during a Monday Senate committee hearing.

The legislation’s proponents and opponents both agree the state should regulate the existing “Wild West” market for intoxicating hemp products.

The debate, however, is over whether the agency that oversees the state’s marijuana program, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), should regulate these hemp products.

If DHSS is put in charge, the products would have to be sold at DHSS-licensed dispensaries.

That’s what is proposed in legislation sponsored by Schroer and in the House filed by state Rep. Chad Perkins, a Bowling Green Republican.

“Similar to alcohol, one regulatory body covers all intoxicating liquors and alcohol, such as beer, bourbon, wine, moonshine, brandy and even hooch,” said Schroer, who chairs the legislative committee that oversees Missouri’s marijuana rules.

Opponents contend restricting hemp-derived THC products to be sold at the dispensaries would allow the “marijuana monopoly” to take over the market, given the limited number of licenses for dispensaries available.

They argue there should be a separate regulating system in place for intoxicating hemp products that would allow them to continue to be sold in gas stations and liquor stores.

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The US Has Failed to Pass AI Regulation. New York City Is Stepping Up

AS THE US federal government struggles to meaningfully regulate AI—or even function—New York City is stepping into the governance gap.

The city introduced an AI Action Plan this week that mayor Eric Adams calls a first of its kind in the nation. The set of roughly 40 policy initiatives is designed to protect residents against harm like bias or discrimination from AI. It includes development of standards for AI purchased by city agencies and new mechanisms to gauge the risk of AI used by city departments.

New York’s AI regulation could soon expand still further. City council member Jennifer Gutiérrez, chair of the body’s technology committee, today introduced legislation that would create an Office of Algorithmic Data Integrity to oversee AI in New York.

If established, the office would provide a place for citizens to take complaints about automated decisionmaking systems used by public agencies, functioning like an ombudsman for algorithms in the five boroughs. It would also assess AI systems before deployment by the city for bias and discrimination.

Several US senators have suggested creating a new federal agency to regulate AI earlier this year, but Gutiérrez says she’s learned that there’s no point in waiting for action in Washington, DC. “We have a unique responsibility because a lot of innovation lives here,” she says. “It’s really important for us to take the lead.”

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Wisconsin Could Make It Impossible for Cottage Food Producers To Make a Living

Since 2017, Wisconsinites have been legally allowed to sell a number of home-baked goods to the general public, free to make as much money as their products can garner. But a new bill being considered by the Wisconsin Legislature could change that, essentially making it impossible for so-called cottage food producers to make a living.

Assembly Bill 897 would increase “the sales threshold from $5,000 to $20,000” for homemade food products, according to a state analysis of the bill. That might seem like an improvement, but “the current sales cap applies only to canned goods,” notes Jobea Murray, board president of the Wisconsin Cottage Food Association. “All other cottage food products are currently unlimited in their sales.” (A bill being considered by the Senate would impose a slightly higher annual cap of $25,000.)

If enacted, A.B. 897 would create one of the strictest cottage food regimes in the country. The states that have a sales cap usually have a limit that’s “high enough for home-based producers to earn a living wage,” says Suranjan Sen, an attorney at the Institute for Justice (I.J.), a libertarian public interest law firm. “Florida’s cap, for example, is $250,000 annually.”

A $20,000 annual sales cap “would make Wisconsin’s the most restrictive cap in the nation,” he continues.

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