Trump Regulators Granted 85% of Industry Wishes
Public Citizen Report Shows National Association of Manufacturers’ Deregulatory Wishlist Is Dictating Administration Policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Regulatory agencies have granted or are working on granting 85% of the wishes related to rulemakings on a list of deregulatory demands submitted by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) early in the Trump administration, according to a Public Citizen report (PDF) released today. “Your Wish Is My Command: Corporate Capture of the Regulatory Process Evident in Trump’s First Two Years,” analyzes agency responsiveness to items on NAM’s wish list over the first two years of Trump’s presidency.
NAM, a big business trade association, and Trump officials targeted more than 130 consumer, worker and environmental protections, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule, the Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rule, and the National Labor Relations Board’s Joint Employer Standard. More than half of agency responses to NAM’s wish list involved weakening existing agency actions; the rest either indefinitely delayed or repealed regulatory actions, as requested by NAM.
“The Trump administration’s responsiveness to industry is astounding – so-called ‘public servants’ are giving powerful corporations their most sought-after objectives at the expense of the public and trusting these companies to self-regulate,” said Matt Kent, regulatory policy associate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and author of the report. “Corporate-backed deregulation is leading to dangerous rollbacks of health, safety and environmental protections and putting all of us at greater risk. It’s a dream come true for corporations, but a nightmare for the rest of us.”
NAM’s wish list was one of many industry lists submitted to the Trump administration in early 2017. It is possible that agencies were even more responsive to wish lists submitted by other trade associations and lobbyists. This report shows that the administration’s deregulatory agenda has been anything but the populist agenda that then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned on in 2016. Instead, Trump’s deregulatory agenda has been nothing but a corporatist agenda where big business lobby groups like NAM are both the source and beneficiary of regulatory roll backs that harm workers, consumers and families.
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