The Manufacturing Agenda the Bush Administration released in January included a review of government regulations that impact manufacturing.  The goal is to take recommendations from industry and make changes that will help manufacturers. 

I believe this is a worthy and important initiative.  But I also know that it will take more than just a review to benefit manufacturers.  If regulations are unnecessary and outdated, we must eliminate them.  If regulations are overly burdensome, we must revise them.

In the coming months, I am going to conduct a campaign to reduce the regulatory burden placed on manufacturers by focusing on those regulations that just don’t make any sense.  Some we’ll try to eliminate.  Others we will advocate revision.  Our goal is to make it that much easier for you to operate your business here in the United States.

Again, the goal is to take realistic steps that positively impact you.  So, I won’t be undertaking a whole revision of the Clean Air Act.  However, I will be setting my sights on regulations such as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 108 – the lighting standard.

Here is a regulation that is very necessary and for which no one advocates elimination or compromising its integrity in any way.  But “108” costs those in the motor vehicle lighting industry time and money because it has become nearly incomprehensible after numerous amendments and additions.   In fact, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has to issue more interpretations of “108” than any other safety standard.  In the last two years, almost 25 percent of the interpretations they issued were for “108”.  That’s more interpretations than those issued for the next three most-interpreted safety standards combined.

With the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association, we are looking for ways to encourage NHTSA to make revision of “108” a real priority.  A cleaned-up version of “108” will reduce a burden on the motor vehicle lighting industry that should not be there.

There are many, many government regulations out there that just don’t make sense or that don’t apply to a company anymore but that the company must submit regulatory paperwork for.  I will continue to work with our manufacturers to identify these regulations.