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Acting Chairman Feldman Highlights Key Safety Accomplishments of President Trump's CPSC

Acting Chairman Feldman Highlights Key Safety Accomplishments of President Trump's CPSC

January 20, 2026

Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has returned to its core mission, advancing consumer safety, while preserving affordability and choice for American families. Since assuming CPSC’s chairmanship one year ago, Acting Chairman Peter A. Feldman has focused on putting Americans first: making safety the mission again; leveling the playing field for American businesses; and restoring public trust that eroded during the Biden administration.

Marking this milestone, Acting Chairman Feldman said:

“One year into President Trump’s historic second term, I want to express my profound thanks to the men and women of CPSC for their professionalism, dedication, and hard work in achieving these accomplishments. I also appreciate the strong cooperation of CPSC’s federal partners. We are just getting started, and I look forward to continuing the agency’s work to advance President Trump’s America First agenda.”

Making Safety the Mission Again

Over the past year, the CPSC has demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to enhancing consumer safety by rigorously enforcing relevant statutes and regulations. The Commission is measuring success by how many unsafe products it keeps out of the hands of American consumers, not by the number of new regulations it issues.

  • Issued a record number of recalls and product safety warnings – the most active year in CPSC history. The Commission issued 542 recalls and warnings, a 32 percent increase over the prior year, surpassing Biden-era recalls and breaking the all-time agency record.
  • Recalled roughly 26 million individual products from the marketplace.  In its first year, the Trump CPSC outpaced the Biden-era yearly average of approximately 15.9 million recalled units by about 63 percent.
  • Issued a record number of online takedown notices. In 2025, CPSC issued more than 88,250 takedown notices of recalled and violative products from online marketplaces, a roughly 50 percent increase over 2024.
  • Surged staff at the ports and along the border. CPSC increased the number of inspectors at U.S. ports of entry by 12 percent and screened roughly 70,000 products, an increase of about 10 percent over 2024.
  • Brought the hammer down on safety cheats. For the first time in CPSC history, the Commission, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, secured criminal sentences against executives of the domestic subsidiary of a China-based electronics firm for violating the Consumer Product Safety Act; obtained a guilty plea to criminal charges for failure to report dangerous portable air conditioners linked to more than 40 fires and one death; and imposed $38.4 million in civil penalties and restitution against companies that put American families at risk.
  • Reaffirmed that CPSC does not operate under a “gag rule” to warn the public about product safety. Under new leadership, the Commission issued a record number of unilateral safety warnings, proving once again that public warnings are entirely possible without new regulations or statutory amendment.
  • Delivered real protection for American families. CPSC took a series of decisive actions to protect the most vulnerable Americans, especially infants, children, and seniors:
    • Established new federal safety standards for infant neck floats and water beads, lifesaving regulations that the Biden CPSC failed to finalize.
    • Advanced safety standard for lithium-ion batteries in micromobility products to prevent fires and deaths.
    • Recalled more than five million Chinese-made above-ground swimming pools linked to child drownings, finally addressing a known deadly hazard ignored by the Biden CPSC.
    • Enforced Reese’s Law to protect infants and young children from deadly button and coin cell ingestion, outpacing previous administration cases by 600 percent.
    • Strengthened enforcement against hazardous adult portable bedrails, a leading cause of fatal entrapment and asphyxiation among older Americans.

Improving Affordability and Choice

Under new leadership, CPSC is advancing its core safety mission while improving the affordability and availability of the safe products Americans rely on every day. The Commission cancelled burdensome regulations that failed to deliver meaningful safety benefits while imposing unnecessary costs on consumers and businesses.

  • Prevented a would-be table saw monopoly. CPSC withdrew a proposed rule that would have mandated a single patented active-injury-mitigation technology, conferring de facto monopoly power on a foreign patent holder while imposing extraordinary costs on American small businesses, contractors, and DIY users.
  • Ended Biden-era fear mongering on gas stoves. Under new leadership, the Commission made clear it will not regulate or ban gas stoves, declining to advance radical Green New Deal ideology at the expense of legitimate safety issues.
  • Reined in regulatory overreach on portable fuel containers. The Commission will no longer regulate or enforce provisions of the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act against containers for fuel additives, which were never intended to be covered by the law. This preserves consumer choice and availability of lawful products, saves American jobs and keeps small businesses from closing their doors.
  • Respected bipartisan congressional limits on ROV regulation. Withdrew an unscientific and long-discredited rulemaking on recreational off-highway vehicle stability that Congress repeatedly directed CPSC to abandon, and that the agency’s own engineers concluded was unnecessary given effective existing standards.
  • Avoided unnecessary regulation of off-highway vehicles. Ended a rulemaking where effective industry standards already address an exceedingly rare hazard, avoiding unnecessary regulation that lacked a strong legal basis and would have imposed costs on farmers, ranchers, and recreational users without commensurate safety gains.
  • Reversed an ultra vires ban on aerosol dusters. Withdrew a proposed ban that exceeded CPSC’s statutory mandate and would have restricted consumer choice and increased costs without addressing the underlying public health issue.
  • Purged obsolete and burdensome regulations.  The Commission directed staff to take necessary steps to rescind outdated rules governing citizens band radio antennas, which have no relevance to modern consumer products, and to withdraw Eisenhower-era refrigerator safety mandates aimed at refrigerator models that have not been produced in over 50 years.

Confronting Threats from China

President Trump’s CPSC recognizes that the People’s Republic of China poses the single greatest product-safety threat to American families – and is willing to say so plainly. While Chinese goods account for approximately one-third of all consumer product imports under CPSC jurisdiction, they are responsible for more than three-quarters of all violations identified by the agency since 2017. Under new leadership, CPSC has acted decisively to confront this threat, protect American consumers, and level the playing field for American businesses.

  • Revoked accreditation of Chinese laboratories. CPSC withdrew accreditation from four Chinese product testing laboratories after finding that the labs issued unreliable or falsified test reports, conduct that could have allowed dangerous children’s products to enter U.S. homes.
  • Cracked down on dangerous Chinese knockoffs. CPSC launched recalls, warnings, and seizures involving toxic, lead-leaching faucets; imitation hair dryers capable of electrocuting users; and counterfeit Labubu dolls that present serious choking hazards.
  • Investigated Chinese e-commerce platforms Shein, Temu and others. Building on work initiated by Commissioners Feldman and Dziak prior to the inauguration, CPSC expanded investigations into foreign-owned platforms to assess compliance with U.S. consumer product safety laws, focusing on dangerous children’s products, de minimis shipments, and enforcement challenges posed by overseas sellers.
  • Invested in smarter targeting of high-risk shipments. CPSC strengthened its e-commerce enforcement infrastructure and deployed advanced analytics and risk-targeting tools, including AI-enabled screening, to better identify suspect shipments from China, intercept unsafe products earlier, and reduce delays for legitimate trade.
  • Closed CPSC’s office for training foreign businesses. Rather than using taxpayer dollars to train Chinese firms on how to access the U.S. market, CPSC redirected resources toward law enforcement at U.S. ports and along the border to interdict violative products before they reach American families.
  • Terminated trilateral regulatory discussions with China and the European Union. This initiative, which was a substantial focus of the previous administration, risked advancing external agendas while weakening U.S. consumer protections and diluting American safety standards.

Restoring Public Trust

CPSC’s ability to protect American families depends on its credibility, integrity, and accountability. When the agency’s decisions are viewed as conflicted or legally unsound, public trust erodes — and with it, the effectiveness of CPSC’s safety mission. Under new leadership, the Commission has taken decisive steps to restore confidence in its work by strengthening ethical standards, financial stewardship, and recommitting the agency to rigorous, lawful, and transparent decision-making.

  • Upheld the U.S. Constitution and restored accountability. Reaffirmed that the Commission operates under the President’s Article II authority, strengthened the chain of command, clarified lines of responsibility, and ensured that policy and enforcement decisions are made by officials who are directly accountable to the American people.
  • Reset the agency’s “tone at the top.” In a report to Congress, the agency’s Inspector General recognized:
    “CPSC has made great improvements in terms of tone at the top and accountability, two areas that have been consistently highlighted as weaknesses in the past. Current senior leadership, unlike a number of their predecessors, has taken decisive action to address issues related to individuals who have failed to meet the high legal and ethical standards expected of federal employees.”
  • Ended conflicts of interest. To avoid actual and perceived conflicts of interest, CPSC withdrew its affiliation and board membership from the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization, whose members and financial sponsors include entities regulated by, under investigation by, and actively litigating against the agency.
  • Terminated unconstitutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. CPSC terminated DEI offices, councils, policies, and contracts, restoring focus to the core safety mission. The agency also discontinued divisive and ideological staff training programs unrelated to consumer product safety that consumed staff time and diverted resources from safety operations.
  • Held agency staff to the highest standards of public service. Terminated CPSC employees for misconduct, including COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program fraud and the targeting of businesses for political reasons.
  • Shed $1.2 million worth of excess office space. Substantially reduced the agency’s rent by cutting underutilized space, even while bringing staff back into the office, saving taxpayer money and realigning CPSC with GSA space utilization guidelines.
  • Eliminated wasteful contracting practices. Conducted a comprehensive review of contracts and task orders, terminating or modifying those that no longer serve mission needs and reducing inflated contract ceilings by nearly $50 million to eliminate waste and prevent nonessential future obligations.
  • Re-established audit credibility. CPSC earned an unqualified audit opinion on its financial statements, achieving the highest level of assurance provided by independent auditors, and reversing a pattern of inconsistent audit results.
  • Rescinded dishonest “Value of Statistical Life” (VSL) methodology. The Commission ended the prior administration’s unprecedented practice of inflating regulatory benefits by double-counting the lives of children, which departed from every other federal agency’s approach, undermined analytical integrity, and exposed lifesaving rules to serious legal risk. CPSC restored a cost-benefit framework that is rigorous, credible, and consistent with established federal standards.
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