Last week was a relatively active one in the pages of the Federal Register. All told, there were 14 rulemakings that carried some kind of quantified cost-benefit analysis. The weeks-long cost-reduction trend came to an end, however. The rule most primarily responsible for that development – a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rule on retrofitting radio altimeters – stood out both for the magnitude of its economic impact and for its unique categorization within the Trump Administration’s regulatory budget framework. Overall, federal agencies published roughly $4.7 billion in total costs and added 745,825 paperwork burden hours.

REGULATORY TOPLINES

• Proposed Rules This Week: 36
• Final Rules This Week: 72
• 2026 Total Pages: 48,667
• 2026 Final Rule Costs: -$1 trillion
• 2026 Proposed Rule Costs: $51.7 billion

NOTABLE REGULATORY ACTIONS

The most significant rulemaking of the week was the FAA rule regarding “Requirements for Interference-Tolerant Radio Altimeter Systems.” The rule:

Will require all radio (also known as radar) altimeter (RA) systems on aircraft operating under 14 CFR part 91 in the airspace of the 48 contiguous United States and the District of Columbia to meet minimum performance requirements necessary to withstand interference from wireless services licensed in the 3.7-4.2 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band (C-band), which is immediately adjacent to the RA frequency band.

As the agency notes, this rule comes as result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” provision that “re-institutes the Federal Communications Commission’s [FCC] general auction authority and specifically directs the Commission to complete a system of competitive bidding for not less than 100 megahertz in the 3.98-4.2 gigahertz band (Upper C-band).” The rule contains one of the more perplexing cost-benefit determinations produced by an agency in some time, though.

FAA estimates that these retrofitting requirements will cost affected aircraft operators between $336 million and $496 million annually under a 7-percent discount (or roughly $4.4 billion total when extrapolating the midpoint of that range out across the rule’s 20-year analytical window). The agency expects these operators to recoup some of these costs – between $265 million and $391 million annually – due to transfer payments from “the spectrum auction winners via the FCC RA retrofit rebate program.” The rule’s benefits analysis merely includes a brief qualitative discussion.

The real kicker, however, comes in the rule’s Executive Order (EO) 14192 analysis section, in which FAA declares that: “This rule is an E.O. 14192 deregulatory action, because it enables safe wireless access to the Upper C-band.” No further rationale is given for this designation. To be sure, the orderly and safe deployment of these Upper C-band auctions is an important policy goal, but – absent some more detailed explanation – FAA’s contribution to that objective is still plainly regulatory in nature. In fact, FAA itself previously designated the rulemaking’s proposed version as a “regulatory action.” As such, this rule joins the canon of EO 14192 peculiarities.

TRACKING TRUMP 2.0

In assessing 2026 rulemakings that include an EO 14192 determination, there have been 59 “deregulatory” rules with combined total savings of $1.1 trillion against 12 “regulatory” rules that involve roughly $45.9 billion in costs. Adding that to the total agencies produced during 2025 (at least from rules that had a clear “regulatory” or “deregulatory” designation), the Trump Administration has enacted $1.2 trillion in total cost reductions thus far under EO 14192. Rules for which agencies have claimed one of the EO’s exemptions have accounted for an additional $10.7 billion in costs so far in 2026.

CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT (CRA)

The AAF CRA tracker provides a full survey of activity under the law thus far into this term. As of today, members of the 119th Congress have introduced CRA resolutions of disapproval addressing 138 “rules” across the Biden and Trump Administrations that collectively involve $176 billion in estimated compliance costs. Of these, 23 have been passed into law, repealing a series of Biden Administration rules that had a combined $3 billion in associated compliance costs. The Trump Administration estimates that the repeal of this rule yields an additional $936 million in savings. While the main window of CRA action has largely passed, there are still outstanding resolutions that could move legislatively. AAF will continue to monitor and update such developments as appropriate.

TOTAL BURDENS

Since the start of 2026, the federal government has published $996.5 billion in total regulatory net cost savings (with $1 trillion in reductions from finalized rules) and 101.3 million hours of net annual paperwork increases (with 86.7 million hours coming from final rules).