26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts

Establish automatic sunsets for new regulations

Partially done

Printed page 806 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”

“Trade adjustment could be made easier by regulatory reforms to remove its attendant friction. These include: … Automatic sunsets for new regulations”

What has happened

May 29, 2026 Partially done
The Department of Energy issued its own "Zero-Based Regulating" direct final rule, effective 2026-07-13, inserting sunset provisions that expire and remove a covered regulation from the CFR unless DOE extends it, never to a date more than five years out. A companion final rule followed on 2026-07-09. The ask stays `partial` rather than `done` because every one of these instruments is scoped to energy regulations at the ten agencies EO 14270 lists; new regulations across the rest of the government carry no sunset, and no government-wide sunset instrument exists.
- DOE direct final rule: Zero-Based Regulating
  Primary Executive branch May 29, 2026
- DOE final rule: Zero-Based Regulating
  Primary Executive branch Jul 9, 2026
Dec 3, 2025 Partially done
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission published "The Sunset Rule", a direct final rule inserting conditional sunset dates into its regulations. Its effective date of 2026-01-08 was confirmed on that date, with the amendment that would have sunset the aircraft impact assessment provisions withdrawn.
- NRC direct final rule: The Sunset Rule
  Primary Executive branch Dec 3, 2025
- NRC: The Sunset Rule — effective date confirmed 2026-01-08, one amendment withdrawn
  Primary Executive branch Jan 8, 2026
Oct 21, 2025 Partially done
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued the first sunset rule, a direct final rule inserting a conditional sunset date into its regulations under the Federal Power Act, the Natural Gas Act and the Natural Gas Policy Act, effective 2025-12-05. One provision was later carved out: the Commission partially rescinded the rule on 2025-12-18, effective 2026-01-20, after a significant adverse comment.
- FERC direct final rule: Implementation of the Executive Order Entitled "Zero-Based Budgeting To Unleash American Energy"
  Primary Executive branch Oct 21, 2025
- FERC: partial rescission of the sunset rule
  Primary Executive branch Dec 18, 2025
Apr 9, 2025 Attempted
Executive Order 14270, "Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting To Unleash American Energy", directs ten agencies and subcomponents — EPA, DOE, FERC, NRC, OSMRE, BLM, BOEM, BSEE, FWS and the Army Corps — to insert a Conditional Sunset Date into their energy regulations, and, at section 4(c), to include in "any new Covered Regulation" a Conditional Sunset Date not more than five years out, with amendments barred from resetting it. That is the Quote's automatic sunset for new regulations, scoped to energy. On the signing date nothing had yet been inserted into the CFR.
- Executive Order 14270: Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting To Unleash American Energy
  Primary Executive branch Apr 9, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”. The Quote is one line in a list of regulatory reforms the essay says would ease trade adjustment; it is leveled on its own terms as an ask for automatic sunsets on new regulations.
partial and not done under §3’s open-ended-ask rule: a directive plus documented implementing action is partial, and done would need the sunset to reach new regulations generally. The scope limit is EO 14270’s own — Covered Agencies and Covered Regulations are defined by a closed list of energy statutes.
Found through the Corpus rather than through the Mandate’s words: “automatic sunset” returns nothing, “sunset provision” and “conditional sunset” return the whole program. Recorded in the chapter log as an instance of playbook §1.1.

Action: create
Object: Automatic sunsets for new regulations
ID: 2112