Consumer Groups Slam New Trump Executive Order on Regulations

— The ABC News Fixer -- Consumer groups are slamming President Donald Trump’s new executive order on regulations, calling the move “arbitrary and irrational” and a threat to consumer safety.

The order, signed Monday, requires that for every federal regulation put in place, two other regulations must be eliminated. It also requires that the cost of all new regulations this year be zero. Trump hailed the move as a win for small businesses, which he said will be able to expand more quickly as a result.

But consumer groups are denouncing the order as a nonsensical simplification of regulations that help protect our food supply, medicines, environment and more.

Rachel Weintraub, the legislative director and general counsel of the Consumer Federation of America, said the move “will have a devastating impact on necessary consumer protection.”

“Creating an arbitrary one-in-two-out rule utterly disregards the substance and purpose for existing regulatory protections and the benefits they can provide to consumers,” she said in a statement. “Our nation deserves a rigorous and deliberative rulemaking process, not one that is based on arbitrary gimmicks that refuse to acknowledge why these rules exist at all.”

The CFA is an association of more than 250 nonprofit consumer groups.

Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, also voiced concern about the impact of the executive order on regulations that protect consumers.

“We believe it is the role of government to set reasonable rules for the marketplace that protect consumers from dangers like predatory lending, dirty air and water, foodborne diseases and unsafe medications,” said Laura MacCleery, the vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for Consumer Reports, in a statement. “This order is telling federal agencies to trade off one rule that improves health or safety for two other rules, and that does not make sense.”

She added that because new regulations may not impose any financial costs on businesses, “agencies will have to put corporate costs before Americans’ well-being.”

Do you have a consumer problem? Contact The ABC News Fixer at www.ABCNews.com/fixer. Letters are edited for length and clarity.