Six Business Groups Tell FCC Its Onshoring Rules Lack Any Legal Defense

Six of the country's largest business lobby groups told the Federal Communications Commission that not a single commenter has defended any of the dozen statutory authorities the agency floated for its proposed onshoring regulations.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, joined by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of New York State, Inc., and the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, made the argument in formal reply comments filed on the Commission's record.

"The record before the Commission confirms that the proposed onshoring regulations are misguided as a matter of policy and beyond the Commission's lawful authority," the groups wrote.

The filing lands at a moment when the FCC is weighing rules that would push companies to shift operations and supply chains onto U.S. soil — a policy priority with broad political backing but, according to the Chambers, no statutory foundation.

An Empty Record

The business groups frame the comment docket itself as evidence against the proposal. They note that the opening comments overwhelmingly opposed the rules. Several commenters, including the Chamber itself, argued in detail that the FCC lacks the authority to issue the regulations at all.

"Not a single comment offers a meaningful defense of the Commission's statutory authority to issue the proposed regulations," the reply comments state. "That should be dispositive: the Notice proposed a dozen potential sources of statutory authority, and no supportive commenter is willing to defend a single one."

That is an unusually blunt procedural attack. Rather than litigating the merits of onshoring line by line, the Chambers are arguing the FCC cannot lawfully act at all — and that its own docket proves it.

The One Counterargument

The reply comments identify exactly one comment that comes close to defending the Commission's legal basis. America First Legal suggested the FCC has authority to issue the proposed regulations because they implicate national security.

The Chambers were unimpressed. They call the characterization of the regulations as implicating "national security" dubious — "perhaps the closest to a statutory-authority defense" is how the filing frames it, damning it with faint praise before dismantling it.

The filing suggests that even if one accepted that national-security framing, it would not rescue the rules from the authority problem. The reply comments indicate the argument fails on its own terms.

Why It Matters

The coalition behind the filing spans both coasts and the industrial Midwest — Michigan, Georgia, Kentucky, New York and Pennsylvania — signaling that opposition to the FCC's approach cuts across regional and sectoral lines within the organized business community. State chambers rarely co-sign federal rulemaking protests unless member companies see direct compliance exposure.

The legal argument also carries weight beyond this docket. If the FCC proceeds without a defended statutory hook, the regulations become an inviting target for court challenge — an outcome the Chambers' language all but telegraphs they are prepared to pursue. Agencies that finalize rules on contested authority routinely lose under the major questions doctrine and related precedent.

For companies in the affected supply chains, the stakes are concrete: onshoring mandates, depending on their final design, could raise procurement costs, force contract renegotiations with foreign suppliers, and impose reporting burdens. The business groups' position is that those costs should not be imposed by an agency acting outside its charter.

What Comes Next

The Commission must now decide whether to finalize the onshoring regulations, narrow them, or withdraw them in the face of a record its own commenters failed to defend. The Chambers' reply comments make clear the business community will treat any final rule resting on the current record as legally vulnerable — and the filing reads as the opening brief in a fight the groups expect to continue in court.