Tobacco Grading and Inspections Services-Rescission of Regulations Establishing Tobacco Price Support Provisions

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Agricultural Marketing Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>7 CFR Part 29</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Doc. No. AMS-CN-25-0027]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0581-AE39</RIN> <SUBJECT>Tobacco Grading and Inspections Services—Rescission of Regulations Establishing Tobacco Price Support Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), Department of Agriculture (USDA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This direct final rule amends regulations that govern tobacco price support services established under the Agricultural Act of 1949. The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004 eliminated the price support and quota system for tobacco produced in the United States. In alignment with Executive Order 14192, AMS is removing and, where appropriate, amending regulations that have expired authorizing statutes and govern non-operational programs. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This direct final rule is effective June 30, 2025, without further action or notice, unless a significant adverse comment is received by June 30, 2025. If a significant adverse comment is received, AMS will publish in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a withdrawal of this direct final rule prior to the effective date. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments can be submitted electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> by searching the docket number listed above. Interested persons are invited to submit written comments concerning this direct final rule. Comments may also be submitted by mail or hand delivery to USDA AMS Cotton and Tobacco Program, 3275 Appling Road, Memphis, TN 38133. All comments should reference the docket number and the date and page number of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . All comments submitted in response to this direct final rule will be included in the record and will be made available to the public at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Public comments are posted without change. Any identifying information submitted with these comments will also be publicly available. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Angie Snyder, Deputy Administrator, USDA AMS Cotton and Tobacco Program, 3275 Appling Road, Memphis, TN 38133; Telephone: (901) 384-3000; Email: <E T="03">angie.snyder@usda.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Agricultural Act of 1949 (7 U.S.C. 1441, 1421, 1423) authorized the establishment of a price support system for tobacco and other commodities. The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004 (Pub. L. 108-357, title VI, § 611(b), Oct. 22, 2004, 118 Stat. 1522) eliminated the price support and quota system for tobacco produced in the United States as well as mandatory grading of types of tobacco eligible for price support. AMS's regulations governing tobacco inspection requirements as they relate to the tobacco price support system are contained in 7 CFR part 29. Upon reviewing these regulations in light of the relevant statutory changes and in alignment with Executive Order 14192, AMS has determined that regulations in 7 CFR part 29 with expired authorizing statutes and that govern non-operational programs should be removed and, where appropriate, amended. AMS is amending language in the subpart A heading and removing obsolete and repetitive statutory authorities listed under this subpart heading. References to price support services are removed from defined terms listed under § 29.1(e) and making a conforming amendment of the definition of “Hearing Clerk.” References to obsolete price support services are removed from the policy statement in § 29.2 by revising the introductory paragraph and paragraphs (a) and (b) and removing paragraph (c). Furthermore, AMS is amending § 29.3(a) by removing references to obsolete price support services and updating contact information for the Office of the Hearing Clerk. The language in the heading of subpart G is being amended to remove references to obsolete price support services, and obsolete and repetitive statutory authorities listed under this subpart heading are being removed. Lastly, §§ 29.9402 and 29.9406 are amended, removing references to obsolete price support services. Given that AMS has not provided services related to tobacco price support programs in twenty years, since 2005, there are no known costs or benefits associated with removing regulations governing the tobacco price support program that was eliminated by statute. Even prior to passage of the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004, price support services were incorporated into the reporting requirements associated with mandatory tobacco inspection and grading services, which are services paid for by the industry through fees. Fee rates for tobacco inspection and grading services were set such that all costs associated with these services were covered by revenues generated from providing these services. To the extent there is any uncertainty about the costs and benefits of these regulations, it is the policy of USDA to err on the side of deregulation and focus resources on fairly and rationally enforcing a discrete and manageable number of regulations. Section 553(b)(3)(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) authorizes agencies to dispense with prior notice and comment for rules when the agency for “good cause” finds that those procedures are “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.” Under this section, an agency, upon finding good cause, may issue a final rule without first publishing a proposed rule. Removing regulations pertaining to tobacco price support services and making conforming amendments will provide transparency and may reduce confusion for tobacco producers and other stakeholders. Further, AMS views this action as noncontroversial and anticipates no adverse public comment. This rule will become effective, as published in this document, July 29, 2025 without further action, unless adverse comments are received on or before June 30, 2025. Adverse comments are considered to be those comments that suggest the rule should not be adopted or suggest the rule should be changed. If AMS receives adverse comments, we will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> <E T="03">,</E> withdrawing this rule before the effective date. AMS will then publish a proposed rule for public comment. Following the close of that comment period, the comments will be considered, and a final rule addressing the comments will be published. Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), AMS certifies that this direct final rule will not, if issued, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. AMS has not provided tobacco price support services in twenty years. The amendments made by the direct final rule will merely conform the CFR with AMS' current operating practices. This rule has been determined to be not significant for the purposes of Executive Order 12866 and, therefore, has not been reviewed by OMB. There are no current information collections associated with the regulations related to the tobacco price support services. USDA has determined that there is no reliance interest in obsolete regulations. Moreover, regardless of the lawfulness, USDA has no interest in maintaining regulations that have expired authorizing statutes or govern non-operational programs. Maintaining regulations pertaining to the obsolete tobacco price support program in 7 CFR part 29 are not a priority. Therefore, AMS is removing and, where appropriate, amending regulations in 7 CFR part 29 pertaining to obsolete price support services. <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 7 CFR Part 29</HD> Administrative practice and procedure, Advisory committees, Government publications, Imports, Pesticides and pests, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Tobacco. </LSTSUB> For the reasons set forth in the preamble, AMS amends 7 CFR part 29 as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 29—TOBACCO INSPECTION</HD> <REGTEXT TITLE="7" PART="29"> 1. The authority citation for part 29 continues to read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 7 U.S.C. 511-511s. </REGTEXT> <SUBPART> <HD SOURCE="HED">Subpart A—Policy Statement and Provisions Governing the Extension of Tobacco Inspection Services</HD> </SUBPART> <REGTEXT TITLE="7" PART="29"> 2. Revise the heading to subpart A to read as set forth above. </REGTEXT> <REGTEXT TITLE="7" PART="29"> 3. Remove the authority citation to subpart A. </REGTEXT> <REGTEXT TITLE="7" PART="29"> 4. Amend § 29.1 by revising paragraphs (e) and (i) to read as follows: <SECTION> <SECTNO>§ 29.1</SECTNO> <SUBJECT>Definitions.</SUBJECT> <STARS/> (e) <E T="03">Designated market</E> means an auction market designated by the Secretary under section 5 of the Tobacco Inspection Act including the town or city which is the population center of the market whose name the market bears and all of the geographical area within 5 road miles of the boundaries of said city or town. <E T="03">And further provided,</E> That this geographical limitation may be waived by the Secretary after a hearing held pursuant to §§ 29.2 and 29.3. <STARS/> (i) <E T="03">Hearing Clerk</E> means the Office of the Hearing Clerk, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC 20250. <STARS/> </SECTION> </REGTEXT> <REGTEXT TITLE="7" PART="29"> 5. Amend § 29.2 by revising the introductory paragraph and paragraphs (a) and (b) and removing paragraph (c) to read as follows: <SECTION> <SECTNO>§ 29.2</SECTNO> <SUBJECT>Policy statement.</SUBJECT> Inspection services currently provided in auction marketing areas are ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━