Holdover Biden FTC Rules Need Congressional and White House Attention
Holdover Biden FTC Rules Need Congressional and White House Attention
By: Matt Barringer
Tens of thousands of new small businesses open every year in the Tar Heel state. The North Carolinians behind these businesses embody the American Dream.
As a community college board member, I am proud of the work our institution does to educate North Carolina's next generation of business owners. We offer classes like Real Small Business, where students get hands-on experience being entrepreneurs.
While community colleges can do a lot to prepare students for a career in business, one thing that is hard to convey is just how much red tape small business owners face. Government regulations have grown exponentially in the last four years. Men and women who went into business to serve customers or markets too often find themselves talking to lawyers and accountants instead.
Fortunately, President Trump has made regulatory reform a priority. Within hours of taking office, the president implemented a regulatory freeze that stopped agencies from proposing new regulations. Days later, the president announced a massive, historic deregulation initiative that requires agencies to repeal 10 rules for every new regulation they propose.
Small business owners are among the biggest beneficiaries of President Trump's early focus. The Federal government estimates that regulations cost American businesses more than $300 billion annually. Efforts to unwrap this red tape are putting more money into entrepreneurs' pockets.
Despite President Trump's early success, significant challenges remain. Bureaucrats who spent years piling regulatory burdens on small businesses remain entrenched in federal agencies, and many are still pushing flawed proposals forward.
Activity at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers a prime example. Just days before President Trump took office, Joe Biden's FTC voted to rush forward with new Business Opportunity and Earnings Claim rules that would impose massive new paperwork requirements on North Carolina entrepreneurs.
If adopted, businesses that make claims about potential earnings to workers or purchasers of services would, under certain conditions, face extensive record-keeping requirements and legal liabilities for even the most basic statements about economic opportunity. The rules would impose costly burdens on well-established, traditional small businesses, particularly those based on sales like real estate and financial services, as well as emerging industries like cryptocurrency investing and the gig economy.
What makes these rules particularly harmful is that they are entirely unnecessary. The FTC itself can and does go after businesses that make false income claims right now. A search of the FTC website for "deceptive earnings claims" returns dozens, if not hundreds, of cases where the agency cracked down on illegal behavior using existing laws and regulations.
If the FTC allows these unnecessary, Biden-era rules to stand, it will undercut President Trump's efforts to defang the Deep State. The proposals represent everything that the president campaigned against. They expand government, create new red tape and layer regulations on top of regulations. They are rules only a Biden bureaucrat could love.
A core mission of the FTC is consumer protection. These rules do not align with that mission because Americans are already protected from the threats they purport to guard against. Enacting the proposals would be like a community college requiring students to take the same course twice for no additional credit. It wastes time, money and resources. The FTC's efforts are better spent enforcing existing laws and regulating where the agency needs new powers.
On the good news front, the rules have yet to advance beyond where Biden left them. Their future remains in limbo. Now is the time for North Carolina's representatives, like Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, to speak out and urge the FTC to put an end to these duplicative rules.
President Trump has done an amazing and historic job fighting regulatory overreach, and North Carolina small business owners are reaping the rewards. Holdover Biden-era regulations should not be allowed to undermine his record and raise costs on our entrepreneurs.
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