Executive Order 13771: Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs

This Order asks federal agencies to, if creating a new regulation, repeal two existing regulations; this is intended as a “regulatory cap”, preventing the number of regulations from going up. Furthermore, it asks federal agencies not to pass any regulations that cost the federal government money without repealing regulations that cost the federal government money; it states that “the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, to be finalized this year shall be no greater than zero”.

It would be completely impossible here to go over the full scope of how this has impacted the federal government. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (under the Office of Management and Budget) states that federal agencies cut $50.9 billion in regulatory costs between 2017 and 2019; their ratio of deregulatory to regulatory actions was 4.3 to 1, but their ratio of “significant” deregulatory to “significant” regulatory actions was 1.7 to 1. You can check out various lists of these actions at https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaEO13771. It’s clear that this Executive Order hasn’t been taken as literal; in 2017, the Department of Energy passed 1 regulation and didn’t deregulate anything. In 2019, the DOJ only removed one regulation, and passed one regulation. (This regulation put bump stocks into the legal category of machine guns, requiring approval from the NFA to own, functionally banning them.)   Then again, in 2017, when this was passed, cabinet agencies removed 67 regulations and passed only 3.

One major 2019 change from the Department of Education removed specific requirements from for-profit trade schools, including requirements that they not create massive student debt; instead, information on these schools has been published online so that prospective applicants for for-profit trade schools can see how these schools perform with respect to these measures.

Other deregulatory actions include: deregulating distance learning amid COVID-19, taking CBD off the controlled substances list, allowing hunting in Alaskan national preserves, removing environmental review for small 5G access points, expediting the removal of undocumented immigrants, lowering the emissions standards for vehicles and power plants, and raising the standard for a school’s sexual assault to be considered grounds for it to lose funding. Generally, the Trump administration has heavily cut environmental regulations in all areas; this will cause a massive increase in pollution and in the severity of the upcoming devastation caused by climate change. You can go and check out the Brookings Institute’s deregulation tracker online at https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/.