Trump’s Unified Agenda on Regulation Is a Corporate Wish List
July 20, 2017
Trump’s Unified Agenda on Regulation Is a Corporate Wish List
Statement of Amit Narang, Regulatory Policy Advocate, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division
Note: Today, the U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs released its spring unified agenda on regulations. According to press reports, the agenda shows 860 proposed regulatory actions that were withdrawn or removed from active status since the previous agenda released in November. Of that total, 469 rulemakings were completely withdrawn and 391 were removed from active status and will undergo further review and consideration.
The only winners from this unified agenda are the corporate interests whose deregulatory wish lists the administration has adopted wholesale. Anyone who believes in protecting public health, safety, infrastructure security and the environment will be outraged by this radical overreach in repealing regulations.
These rollbacks of critical public protections will leave American workers, consumers and children vulnerable on a daily basis to risks such as air and water pollution, unsafe products and tainted food, dangerous workplaces and a newly deregulated Wall Street that once again could threaten economic collapse. Time and time again, our country has seen the tragic consequences when strong and effective regulations are not in place, whether it’s food safety scandals, unsafe toys, pipeline leaks and oil train derailments, water contamination that threatens communities or worker deaths due to unsafe workplaces.
Deregulation has led to historic disasters such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the Wall Street meltdown that led to the Great Recession and, most recently in the U.K., the Grenfell Tower fire. What this unified agenda makes clear is that, at the behest of big corporations, the Trump administration is laying the foundation for a new wave of deregulatory disasters.
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