The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the White House is considering how federal regulators ought to weigh the impact of their rules on international trade. At a meeting with the European Union’s Secretariat General in November 2007, the U.S. and the E.U. agreed to develop recommendations for regulators on both sides of the Atlantic that would identify any significant impacts that regulations might have on international trade and investment.

That could result in quite a long list. Transportation rules, for example, have international as well as domestic impacts. Recent publication rules at the National Institutes of Health, which were put into effect without much analysis, are hurting domestic scientific publishers in their competition with foreign scientific publishers, a publishers’ group complained to OMB.

Some of those commenting on the proposed international trade impact initiative want to go further. To encourage transparency in regulating, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged U.S. and E.U. regulators to post all their proposed regulations on a single public website. A European organization, Business Europe, also strongly endorsed the initiative.

U.S. and European consumer groups have opposed the initiative, however. They told OMB they saw “no justification for any further expansion of impact assessment burdens” (referring to burdens on regulators, not the public.)

OMB hopes to present a final draft of the US proposal at a discussion with the Europeans in April. New guidelines for regulators could follow in the summer.