The End of CPSC as We Know It? Trump Administration May Be Considering Moving Product Safety to Health Department

An idea that was first floated — and then shelved — more than 50 years ago may become reality, if an apparent Trump administration draft budget proposal moves forward. If enacted, that proposal would shutter the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as it has existed since its creation in 1972 and transfer CPSC’s functions to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

What Once Was Old . . .

In 1971, a bill — H.R. 8110, the “Consumer Product Safety Act of 1971” — was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives with the support of President Richard Nixon that would have sought to improve the safety of consumer products by directing the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Richard Nixon to establish “a consumer product safety program which shall include the promulgation and enforcement of product safety standards.”

Ultimately, in passing 1972’s “Consumer Product Safety Act” (CPSA), Congress took a different approach, opting for an independent five-member commission — the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) — “reflect[ing] the [House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee’s] belief that an independent agency can better carry out the legislative and judicial functions contained in this bill with the cold neutrality that the public has a right to expect of regulatory agencies formed for its protection.” The Committee concluded that the “delicate balance” between safety and “economic considerations . . . should be struck in a setting as far removed as possible from partisan influence.” President Nixon signed the CPSA, writing that, even though it “differs in several ways from the legislation I proposed, it answers a long-felt need, and I am happy to give it my approval.”

. . . Is Made New?

Recently, The Washington Post reported about a seemingly leaked draft of a document (referred to as a “passback”) which provides proposed budget input from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and proposes a significant reorganization of DHHS. Notably, it creates a “new staff division . . . within the Office of the [DHHS] Secretary that will absorb functions and staff from the [CPSC].” That division, under an “Assistant Secretary for Consumer Product Safety,” would “continue carrying out CPSC’s mission to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death from consumer products,” and it would have a proposed budget of $135 million to carry out that mission.

The $135 million budget is about 10 percent below the $150.975 million Congress appropriated to CPSC for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 (a level that is being maintained in FY 2025 while the federal government continues to operate under a continuing resolution). However, the OMB draft passback states that the move would add efficiencies through “CPSC’s administrative and support functions that can be carried out by existing [DHHS units].”

Our Consumer Product Safety team will be keeping watch for any further developments. Note: The Washington Post story linked above did not include a link to a copy of the passback, but the passback was posted by the Inside Medicine blog.

For questions about CPSC policy or about compliance with the CPSA, including timely reporting and recalls under Section 15(b) of the CPSA, or with other product safety matters, please reach out to the authors of this post or any of their colleagues on Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Product Safety team.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2025 All Rights Reserved. This Blog post is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.