On April 14, 2025, following President Trump’s recently issued executive order addressing regulatory barriers to competition, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a Request for Public Comment Regarding Reducing Anti-Competitive Regulatory Barriers (RFI).
The RFI asks consumers, workers, businesses, startups, potential market entrants, investors, and academics for comments on federal regulations that may have one of the six anti-competitive effects identified by the FTC. Those enumerated effects include creating or facilitating the creation of monopolies, creating unnecessary barriers to entry, limiting competition, creating or facilitating licensure or accreditation requirements that unduly limit competition, unnecessarily burdening the agency’s procurement process, and imposing distortion on the operation of the free market.
After identifying a regulation with one of the enumerated effects, the FTC requests, essentially, a legal analysis of the basis of the comment. The additional information requested includes:
- a citation to the regulation,
- the specific language in that regulation that leads to the anti-competitive effect,
- an applicable legal authority interpreting the regulation,
- an explanation of how the regulation operates (including relevant product and geographic markets affected),
- an explanation of why the regulation should be eliminated or modified, and
- an explanation of “whether the regulation satisfies the definition of ‘significant regulatory action’ in Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993.”
The amount of detailed information requested through the RFI suggests that the FTC will carefully consider industry comments, which may be submitted through May 27, 2025.