However, this is another campaign promise that Trump has fully delivered on. His predecessor’s unparalleled rulemaking has almost stopped completely, and most of the signature regulatory initiatives implemented under former President Barack Obama have been blocked or rescinded. By almost any standard, the pace of reform is impressive.
Candidate Trump repeatedly vowed to cut regulation “massively” and to “remove the anchor dragging us down.” Indeed, independent estimates peg the private-sector cost of U.S. regulation at more than $2 trillion annually, more than income tax collections each year.
The Obama administration alone increased the nation’s regulatory burden by more than $122 billion annually. Combined with the red tape imposed during the administration of President George W. Bush, regulatory costs have increased by at least $200 billion annually during the past 15 years.
The benefits of regulatory reform are numerous and well-documented. In a recent report on “The Growth Potential of Deregulation,” the Council of Economic Advisors conservatively estimated that excessive regulation cost the United States an average of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product growth per year since 1980.
A Challenge to the Status Quo
The Achievements
For this reason, Trump is pursuing a multifaceted reform agenda. For example, he has reversed his predecessor’s use of executive power by revoking the “guidance” dictating that transgender students have the right to use public restrooms that match their gender identity.Likewise, Trump issued exemptions from Obama’s far-reaching contraceptive mandate that required employers to offer health insurance coverage for all contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including medications and devices that may act as abortifacients, as well as sterilization procedures.
The president’s authority to appoint the heads of executive branch agencies (under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution) is among the most effective, although the power to dismiss imprudent administrators may be even more potent. Of particular significance was the appointment of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Pruitt has proposed the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s costly climate change initiative. He likewise is leading the effort to rescind Obama’s Waters of the United States rule, which imposed a new definition for the waters the federal government can regulate under the Clean Water Act. The broad definition, if enacted, would infringe on property rights and override the role of states in water stewardship.
Slashing Red Tape
However, the process of regulation is so ingrained in the political system that it’s not always possible to shift into reverse.The administration inherited 1,985 regulations in the rulemaking pipeline, 966 in the proposal stage and 1,019 in the final stage. The administration’s new Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions reflects the withdrawal of 635 previously listed rulemakings, another 244 regulations rendered inactive, and the delay of 700 rulemakings. The agenda also commits federal agencies to cutting future regulatory costs to the private sector by $9.8 billion.
Executive Orders
The president has also issued a variety of executive orders (EOs) and presidential memoranda directing agency administrators to take specific regulatory actions. Signaling a major change in energy policy, for example, the president directed agency officials to expedite requests for approvals to construct and operate the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to invite TransCanada to resubmit its application for construction and operation of the Keystone XL pipeline.The regulatory budgeting established in EO 13771 is intended to inject economic discipline and rationality into rulemaking. If agencies are compelled to restrict the costs imposed on the public, they must engage in a type of rolling retrospective review of the vast accumulation of rules that comprise more than 185,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, up from 138,000 in 2000.