Trump signs executive order requiring that for every one new regulation, two must be revoked

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday morning requiring that for every new federal regulation implemented, two must be rescinded.

“This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen,” Trump declared moments before signing it in the Oval Office. “There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be a normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily. And that's what our country has been all about.”


The executive order signing, which fulfills a campaign pledge, comes after the president held a listening session with small-business leaders.

“If you have a regulation you want, No. 1, we’re not gonna approve it because it’s already been approved probably in 17 different forms,” Trump said. “But if we do, the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation. So if there’s a new regulation, they have to knock out two.”

The president added that “it goes far beyond that.” “We’re cutting regulations massively for small business — and for large business,” he said. “But they're different. But for small business, and that’s what this is about today.”

The executive order calls for agencies to pinpoint “at least two” current regulations to be repealed for each new proposed regulation. And it says the net incremental cost for fiscal 2017 should “be no greater than zero,” meaning the cost of new regulations should be offset by existing rules that will be rescinded.

House Speaker Paul Ryan applauded the order in a statement Monday afternoon, noting that it builds on House Republicans’ “Better Way” agenda and comes as the lower chamber is set to repeal a number of Obama era regulations this week.

“The explosion of federal regulations has hamstrung small business growth and crippled our economy,” he said. “President Trump’s executive order helps bring the nation’s regulatory regime into the 21st century by putting regulators on a budget, and addressing the costs agencies can impose each year.”

In a statement from the Roosevelt Room previewing his executive order, Trump had teased that he would be taking action later Monday morning “to begin our effort to dramatically reduce federal regulations.”

“And we’ll be reducing them big league and their damaging effects on our small businesses, our economy, our entrepreneurial spirit,” he pledged. “And it’s been very badly damaged. So the American dream is back.”

Small businesses have “been treated very, very badly,” he told the small-business leaders, vowing to “create an environment for small business like we haven’t had in many, many decades.”

“As you people know better than anybody, it’s almost impossible now to start a small business. And it’s virtually impossible to expand your existing business because of regulations,” Trump said.

He cautioned, however, that his rhetoric wasn’t a knock on his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, but of “many presidents” before Trump.

“It’s a knock on everybody,” he said. “It got particularly bad in the last eight years. But it’s not a knock on anybody. It’s a knock on many.”