Exactly, it will impact people who may not necessarily be large-scale breeders but have breeding dogs. It will impact me, I have German Shepherds, I only have one or two litters a year. As a default, if you ship your puppies (I do not), you would automatically have to be inspected. This will cause bloodlines to be fixated in certain areas, you would never have diversity, unless a person wishes to allow inspections. From glancing over at what they have outlined on the website, it looks above and beyond any state regulations.
Without the actual rule to look at, and going on what the article quotes, it seems to me that if the buyer handles the shipping arrangements and costs, separate from the purchase of the dog, you would be exempt.
We are in the same boat that you are (small GSD breeder), but we allow anyone to come and look at the dogs, and generally prefer to sell locally, shipping only rarely; and during the summer we cannot ship by air anyway, so most drive in to pick up. We have had people drive from the east coast (mainly because they don’t trust air shipping anymore).
And about the localized bloodlines: as long as you can ship semen, and if this new set of rules doesn’t affect the actual breeding, you can still breed to anyone anywhere.
And you are right about local puppy mill laws: there is enough local control in most cases to handle things. This is one more case of the Feds overstepping their boundaries, and making it difficult to do any sort of business at all; and regulating things they have no knowledge of.