Biden to nominate House aide Trumka to serve on consumer safety commission

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden plans to nominate a House aide who has worked extensively on oversight and consumer issues to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the White House said on Tuesday.

Richard Trumka Jr. is general counsel and staff director of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform's subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy. He was previously an assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Attorney General's Office.

Trumka, the son of Richard Trumka who is president of the 12.5-million-member AFL-CIO, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Economic and Consumer Policy subcommittee chaired by Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, has investigated a number of consumer product issues including the safety of baby food, dangerous pet collars and advertising for Alphabet Inc's YouTube Kids.

The commission is currently divided 2-2 between Republicans and Democrats.

The White House announced on July 2 that Biden planned to nominate Alexander Hoehn-Saric, a Democrat who is chief counsel for the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Consumer Protection, to chair the CPSC, along with a lawyer at the agency for another commissioner slot.

The White House also said Biden plans to nominate Mary Boyle to the commission. She is the CPSC's current executive director and has spent more than a decade at the agency in senior positions.

In December 2019, Senate Democrats said the CPSC was inappropriately deferential to companies it investigates. Settlements reached by the commission under Republican then-President Donald Trump "are at odds with traditional recall agreements negotiated by the CPSC,” the Senate Commerce Committee report said.

“Rather than providing consumers with a specific remedy that repairs all impacted products or a refund to remove the dangerous products from homes, these recalls perversely serve as marketing tools to allow the recalling company to sell additional products,” the report found.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler and Marguerita Choy)