There are, no doubt, a good many reasons for the current business boom – which has generated current estimates of 3.75 – 4% growth for the second quarter.
Deregulation is certainly one of them.
Though barely ever mentioned by media – stormy daniels is far more important – there is little doubt that this is a major contributor to our current business climate.
But just how much deregulation is taking place?
From Dan Bosch and Dan Goldbeck’s article at americanactionforum.org:
In releasing the Spring 2018 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions on May 9th, the Trump Administration stated that the agenda demonstrated its “ongoing commitment to responsible regulatory reform and progress toward eliminating unnecessary regulatory burdens.”
Indeed, the Trump Administration is making substantial deregulatory progress, as this initial review published by the American Action Forum notes – both in terms of the number of rulemakings and the estimated costs and savings included in published final rules.
While there are 2,226 active rulemakings currently underway at federal agencies, this study focuses on those rules that have received a designation under Executive Order (EO) 13,771. That order requires executive agencies to reduce regulatory burden and meet cost savings targets by using deregulatory actions to cancel out costs of new, significant regulatory actions.
According to the Unified Agenda, 499 regulations are designated as deregulatory while 133 are regulatory and significant enough to be covered by EO 13,771. The ratio of 3.75 to 1 exceeds the order’s goal of 2 to 1.
That, folks, is a lot of deregulating.
But, other than untethering business, is this a good thing? Is it, for example, going to make products less safe? Workers less protected from employers?
I truthfully do not know the answers to those questions. But I do know that the United States has, for a good many years, had far and away the most regulated business climate of any industrialized country in the world. So I can hope that the deregulation taking place is predominantly beneficial in nature.
And I have no doubt that if anything being deregulated by the Trump administration turns out to create a problem, our media will be happy to tell me so. Immediately.
