US: Protections for travellers rights stall under Trump

A Congress-ordered rule that requires airlines to refund your bag fee if your luggage arrives late and other consumer protection regulations have stalled in DoT regulatory proceedings. Congress passed the refund law 18 months ago in July 2016. It called for airlines to automatically refund the fees when a passenger’s luggage arrives at least 12 hours after a domestic flight. Airlines collected nearly $4.2b in bag fees that year. The law left it to the DoT to work out and finalise the details by July 2017. The refund regulation is among a handful of consumer-oriented proposals at the department that were delayed, postponed or withdrawn in the year since President Trump took office. Trump ordered a regulatory freeze on Jan. 20, 2017, his first day in office. At the time, Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said the agencies needed time to review new or pending regulations. Ten days later, Trump signed an executive order requiring any new regulation to trigger the repeal of two existing regulations. The next month, he ordered every federal department to recommend which regulations to repeal or modify. Last month, Trump boasted of cancelling or delaying more than 1,500 planned regulatory actions — "more than any previous president by far.” Critics say Trump threw out consumer protections along with the red tape. "Consumers already know that airlines will stop at nothing — from exorbitant bag fees to shrinking seat sizes — to turn a profit," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "Now, they are faced with an administration apparently anxious and eager to aid the airlines’ anti-consumer assault."<br/>