Questions swirl about future of consumer product safety oversight and manufacturing regulation

(InvestigateTV) — Brett Horn’s faith in consumer product safety standards began in the months after one of his triplets was killed by a dresser that tipped over on him.

Charlie’s death in 2007 was not a freak accident: hundreds of Americans – mostly children – had been injured or killed by a dresser tipover, his father later learned.

So Brett Horn joined the chorus of grieving parents who pushed for years for mandatory standards to prevent these deaths. In 2022, Congress passed a law that required manufacturers to build safer dressers.

In nearly two decades of advocacy, Horn never viewed the safety of children as a partisan issue. Defective cribs, dressers, toys, batteries, generators and other household products have maimed or killed thousands of Americans from all political stripes.

But the independence of the federal agency to oversee consumer products and to create safety regulations now is at risk.

In fact, it’s a battle that extends beyond the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to other federal independent agencies that oversee banking, airplane crashes, federal elections and many other issues that touch American lives.

For 90 years, a Supreme Court precedent has dictated that the president has limited power over these executive branch agencies.

Now that is in question as the Supreme Court mulls expanding presidential power over these agencies.

The Trump administration is testing the boundaries of that 1934 case as he has fired commissioners – mostly Democrats - from at least 10 independent agencies, including the three Democrats who served as commissioners to the CPSC.

Some of those fired are currently involved in court battles that likely will be decided by the Supreme Court’s view of the 1934 case.

President Trump also issued executive orders to limit and roll back regulations – moves that critics say benefit businesses – by requiring agencies to eliminate 10 rules for every new rule introduced.

Some say that the CPSC wields too much power over private businesses. Others applaud the Trump administration’s signal to fold it into the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

But Democrat lawmakers and consumer advocates from different political backgrounds are concerned, saying that the mission of the CPSC is too important and should be exempt from sweeping changes through executive order for fewer regulations, or being cut as an independent agency.

“As a conservative-minded individual, I absolutely agree with the executive branch’s efforts to cut costs with the federal government,” Horn said. “However, I don’t feel that product safety is the place we need to do that. Americans’ safety should come first.”

He founded Charlie’s House, an interactive facility in Kansas City that shows all the potential household dangers to children, from dressers to Christmas trees to infant seats.

The CPSC oversees more than 15,000 product categories from appliances to toys. It issues recalls for defective products, helps set safety standards to prevent injuries and deaths and ferrets out dangerous consumer products entering the U.S. through the ports or through online marketplaces.

“We have to keep on hammering the message that consumers need protection,” said Don Mays, a product safety expert who works with manufacturers and helps in the creation of consumer safety standards. “They have to rely on the safety of the products they’re bringing into their home. And if the government can’t protect us, who’s going to?”

A ’giant favor’ to China

Many Americans are unaware of the scope of the CPSC’s work. Brett Horn was among them until he received a devastating call on Nov. 1, 2007, about his 2 ½-year-old son.

“I didn’t choose to enter the world of product safety,” Horn said. “It chose me.”

Parents who lost children in dresser tipovers worked for more than two decades for safety regulations that the CPSC oversees.

But just three years since the STURDY Act passed, dangerous dressers are slipping into the U.S. – and some are being caught by the CPSC at the borders.

Since that law took effect, the CPSC has issued 18 violations to manufacturers who were selling unsafe dressers – 16 of them were coming from overseas companies, according to an InvestigateTV analysis of CPSC data.

Since January 2009, the agency has issued more than 35,000 notices of violation against manufacturers for all types of consumer products that did not comply with federal law or regulations. Nearly 95% of those violations were issued to overseas companies.

More than 6,700 of these violations involved lead in children’s products such as Halloween costumes, infant onesies and fidget toys.

More than 1,200 involved a ban on Phthalate, a chemical that may cause cancer, infertility and obesity. It was found in dolls, pool toys and floaties and other toys.

More than 680 involved defective fireworks, nearly all of which were manufactured in China.

At least one of the fired CPSC commissioners fears for future product safety if the agency’s role or independence is diminished.

“It’s a giant favor to shoddy Chinese manufacturers at the expense of American businesses,” said former commissioner Richard Trumka Jr.

He pointed to lithium-ion batteries as an example. He said that industry members asked the CPSC for regulations to ensure safety. These batteries are used in e-bikes, scooters and other motorized devices and have been linked to deadly fires.

Reputable manufacturers said they wanted safety standards, “because we’re getting undercut by people who aren’t putting any safety thought into the batteries they’re sending over from China,” Trumka said.

The CPSC was set to issue safety standards for the batteries in May, but then the three commissioners were terminated and proposed regulations were put on hold because of the earlier executive order.

“This is a classic example of giving an advantage to China, which I thought we hated,” he said.

There are a number of other regulations that remain in limbo, including safety standards for water beads, infant neck floats and other items. The CPSC did not respond to requests for comment on the status of those proposed rules.

But days after the firings in May, the CPSC issued a press release saying that it had set a weekly record for the number of recalls and product warnings issued – 28.

Nearly all recalls and warnings involved products made in China, the CPSC said.

Acting chairman Peter A. Feldman said in the May 15 release, “We always put Americans first.”

Questioning who should be in charge

Attorney Oliver Dunford, for one, applauds potential changes at the CPSC and other independent agencies, as well as an unlimited authority of the president to fire their commissioners.

“In my view...the Constitution establishes only three branches of government, the legislative, executive, and judiciary,” Dunford said. “And therefore, there are no grounds under the Constitution to establish agencies which are independent of one of those three branches.”

Dunford represented an Oklahoma company that made baby loungers that was subjected to CPSC enforcement action.

The business would not agree to a recall, nor would it agree that its loungers caused deaths or injuries. So the commission issued a public warning and filed an administrative complaint against the company.

Ultimately, the company won the case in front of the administrative law judge.

“We don’t think the facts supported the commission’s allegations,” Dunford said. “We think when the government wants to restrict a business or an individual’s rights, that the government should have to go into court and prove its case before an independent judge and jury.”

The future of the CPSC’s current power structure, with five commissioners appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, rests with the Supreme Court and its interpretation of the Humphrey’s Executor case.

The decision in that case was issued in 1935 and said that the president cannot fire the heads of independent agencies unless there is malfeasance or neglect of duty

If the current Supreme Court strikes down the precedent set by that case, it would essentially hand control of independent agencies to the president.

“If an agency exercises executive power, then the heads of those agencies have to be removable by the president,” Dunford said.

But in the case of the CPSC, advocates fear such a move could subject product safety to the whims of any president, now or future, and his or her political views.

“We don’t need a weaker CPSC,” Horn said. “We need a strong CPSC to counteract all of these unsafe products that are flooding the marketplace.”

From independence to cabinet-level oversight

Earlier this year, the Trump administration released its proposed budget, which, among many other things, called for moving the CPSC under the control of HHS without providing any specifics of how that would work.

But the actions have been endorsed by the CPSC’s acting chairman, Peter A. Feldman, a Republican.

In the agency’s 2026 budget request to Congress, Feldman wrote in the executive summary, “CPSC recognizes the significant opportunities inherent in such reorganization and welcomes the opportunity to work with HHS.”

In the meantime, the agency has seen its workforce and budget slashed.

“The CPSC is a very small agency, but it has a very huge mission. And we are all safer today from products that would otherwise be hazardous if the CPSC didn’t exist,” Horn said.

The effects of the changes that have been made – from executive orders to staff cuts – already have left a mark.

Several safety standards designed to protect babies and children from dangerous products have been put on hold.

And staff cuts have left some ports without a CPSC agent patrolling for dangerous products.

“The most important thing that I anticipate happening next is unnecessary deaths of U.S. consumers, because we’re not solving...problems that are completely within its control to solve,” former commissioner Trumka said.

Advocates for the CPSC said that its mission would become an afterthought in HHS, which has nearly a $95 billion budget. For FY 2026, CPSC’s budget is about $136 million.

There likely would be questions on how to enforce laws and regulations given to the CPSC by Congress and how quickly the public would be warned about a dangerous product.

“If we don’t have a strong CPSC, what we find is that we get products, violative products, that are crossing our borders and are competing with those manufacturers that want to make good products,” said Mays, the product safety expert.

Horn has a much more personal view. What happens when those violative products begin to kill or maim children, but action is no longer swift?

“My heart goes out to anyone who’s experienced tragedy similar to mine,” Horn said, “where a simple vetting of the product or a rule that might be delayed because of political whims causes further harm and further accident, it’s heartbreaking.”the

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