D.C. Insider June 2026: Continuing to Collect Tariffs and the Agenda for Making IPOs Great Again

Washington is signaling a meaningful shift in the regulatory landscape. While tariffs on most imported goods continue to be collected amid ongoing legal challenges, the SEC is simultaneously advancing initiatives aimed at expanding access to the public markets and reducing disclosure burdens. Together with evolving enforcement priorities across federal agencies, these developments are reshaping the rules that govern capital formation, corporate reporting and market oversight. In this edition of The ICR D.C. Insider, we examine the policy and regulatory developments that could have important implications for public companies, investors and management teams.

Tariffs

• Tariffs Still Are Still Being Collected – Following several court actions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit allowed the temporary 10% across-the-board tariff on most imported goods, Section 122, to remain in place. This authority is set to expire on July 24, 2026, unless extended by Congress.

SEC

• Making “IPOs Great Again” – Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins continued to drive his agenda to, in his words, “Make IPOs Great Again” with a series of initiatives:
  • Two proposed amendments would amend SEC rules and forms governing registered offerings to increase efficiency, flexibility, and cost savings and simplify its public company reporting framework and better calibrate disclosure obligations with a company’s size and maturity. Specifically:
    • The first proposal would broaden eligibility for shelf registration and extend certain communication and registration accommodations, currently reserved for well-known seasoned issuers (WKSIs), to a broader group of listed companies.
    • The second proposal seeks to simplify the public company reporting framework by consolidating the current five filer categories into two and expanding eligibility for scaled disclosure accommodations across a significantly larger portion of the public company universe.
  • In a speech at the Stanford Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Chairman Atkins discussed key themes, including:
    • Modernizing the Commission’s “Gun-Jumping” rules that dictate how and what companies that are in the IPO process can communicate to better align requirements with today’s technology and how investors use it.
    • Regulators should remove unnecessary barriers to alternative public market entry methods rather than forcing companies into workaround structures (with innovation beyond traditional underwritten IPOs, including SPACs and direct listings).
    • Direct listings may be revisited, with the Chairman specifically questions whether Securities Act registration requirements for direct listings still provide meaningful investor protection after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that made Section 11 claims harder in certain direct listing contexts.
      
• Decades-Long “Gag Rule” Ended – The SEC rescinded its long-standing rule under which the Commission refused to settle with defendants unless they agreed not to publicly deny the allegations brought by the Commission. The “neither admit nor deny” provision. As Chairman Atkins put it, “speech critical of the government is an important part of the American tradition. This rescission ends the policy prohibiting such criticism by settling defendants.” Overturning the rule means that the SEC can negotiate an admission as part of a settlement, potentially exposing defendants to greater scrutiny. Indeed, this could also prompt the SEC to include more specifics in litigation in anticipation of a defendant’s public disavowal.
  
• Proposal to Eliminate Quarterly Reporting Requirement for Public Companies Advances – The SEC formally proposed to give public companies the option to file their financial reports semiannually, rather than quarterly. The proposal is out for public comment period, and the rules can be changed by a majority vote of SEC Commissioners.
  
• Climate Change Reporting Rule On Way to Being Withdrawn – The SEC proposed to rescind previously-enacted – but never acted upon – rules that would have required companies to provide climate-related information in their registration statements and annual reports.
  
• Auditor Rules Should Change – Chief Accountant Kurt Hohl said the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) should rescind its rules around conflicts of interest for auditors and their clients and follow the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules instead.
  
• A Commission of Two – SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce will leave the agency in November to teach law at Regent University School of Law. A leading voice on digital assets, she pushed back on Biden-era enforcement-first approach to crypto regulation. Upon her departure, there will be two commissioners, both Republicans, and the White House has shown no signs that it intends to nominate any Democrats (normally, there would be two Commissioners from the party that is out of power).

FTC

• New Enforcement Cooperation Policy Announced – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a new cooperation advisory that creates a clear path to declination, subject to the Enforcement Division’s discretion, for companies that self-report, fully cooperate, provide full restitution and/or disgorgement, and remediate misconduct, absent aggravating circumstances. They will also credit prompt, good-faith self-reporting even if the CFTC already learned of the misconduct from another source, a notable departure from past practice.

Department of Justice

• Justice Department Pivots on Enforcement Priorities – In 2025, the Justice Department pivoted to a greater focus on consumer protection, healthcare fraud, and fraud on government programs and away from traditional financial fraud cases, according to a new report from consulting firm Brattle. At the Criminal Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), overall financial fraud enforcement fell to 51 cases in 2025, marking a third consecutive annual decline and the lowest level of the past decade, well below the 10-year average of 73.

China

• Lawmakers Criticize Banks Over China Underwriting – An investigation by the House Select Committee on China found JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America underwrote the IPO of a Chinese battery company on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The Select Committee’s report said that the company has ties to forced labor and that the Pentagon designated the company as a Chinese military company. “To be clear, the banks broke no U.S. law, and the transactions were not prohibited by U.S. law. But each bank made the choice to essentially disregard the U.S. government’s Chinese military company designation to make millions of dollars,” the report said.