Obama Orders Agencies to Consider International Trade When Setting Regulations
President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order on Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation May 1 designed to promote American exports by helping eliminate unnecessary regulatory differences between the U.S. and other countries. The order says domestic regulatory needs must still be met, but agencies must consider the international regulatory environment in developing any rules. The White House said different regulatory requirements in different countries can significantly increase costs for companies doing business abroad.
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The Executive Order sets up an interagency working group, chaired by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, to provide a forum to foster regulatory transparency, sound regulatory practices, and U.S. regulatory approaches abroad. It requires Federal agencies to consider regulatory reforms that eliminate unnecessary differences between the U.S. and its major trading partners.
Within 120 days, "each agency shall develop and submit to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a preliminary plan ... under which the agency will periodically review its existing significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed," the order said.
The order is "a paradigm shift for U.S. regulators by directing them to take the international implications of their work into account in a consistent and comprehensive way, said Sean Heather, vice president of the U.S. Chamber's Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, in a statement (here). "International cooperation is clearly in the interest of regulators and is now assuming a central role in framing good domestic regulatory policy."
Heather said the order "supports good trade policy. Dialogue between U.S. regulators and their foreign counterparts can avert unnecessary divergences in regulation that become 'behind the border' barriers to commerce."