Donald Trump famously declared that “for every new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations [must] be identified for elimination”.
This was music to the ears of all those believing that governments around the world have become too bloated and too expensive and that they interfere too much. The necessary executive order – number 13771 – was signed on 30th January 2017, ten days after Mr Trump took office. His first general counsel said that “the ever-growing, unaccountable administrative state is a direct threat to individual liberty”. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom Mr Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, had expressed concerns about the immense powers of the modern administrative state.
In the summer 2020 edition of Regulation, a review published by the Cato Institute, an article by Keith Belton and John Graham argued that no other post World War II president, except perhaps Ronald Reagan, had exhibited such public commitment to the cause of deregulation as had Mr Trump. The two writers reported on a study they had conducted of the Trump administration’s deregulatory efforts at the end of his second year in office.
One finding was that the flow of all new regulations in the first two years under Mr Trump was “much smaller” than under the first two years of the two previous administrations. George W Bush had issued 6 999 regulations and Barrack Obama 6 793, but Mr Trump only 4 310. This is a significant decrease.
Looking only at “major regulations” issued during the first two years of the three presidents, Mr Bush’s count was 103, that of Mr Obama 176, and that of Mr Trump only 90 – again a significant decrease.
However, reducing the flow of new regulations was much easier than cutting away the huge stock of regulations already in force. Mr Trump had undertaken 243 “deregulatory actions” under his executive order, with 514 still in progress. These deregulatory actions were, however, “very small” when measured against the total of almost 69 000 regulations adopted in the last 24 years.