EDITORIAL: Real progress on federal regulatory reform

Las Vegas Review Journal cited CEI’s expert on the Federal Register

It was a herculean task, given President Joe Biden’s slavish devotion to a hulking public sector. “Four years of expansive whole-of-government regulatory initiatives from the Biden administration on climate, equity, social policy, infrastructure and technology culminated in the fattest Federal Register ever seen,” notes Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Not anymore. Mr. Crews reports that the Federal Register — which contains agency rules, proposed rules and public notices — ended 2025 at 61,461 pages, down 42 percent from 2024. That’s the thinnest edition since Mr. Trump’s first term and a level last reached in 1993.

The number of final rules published also dropped, by 25 percent last year to 2,441. That’s “the lowest total since record-keeping began in the mid-1970s,” according to Mr. Crews. But the headway is even more impressive given that nearly 10 percent of those final rules were rushed through by the Biden White House in the first month of 2025.

Mr. Trump’s regulatory reforms — with his tax cuts — have helped offset the economic disruptions caused by his affinity for tariffs as a blunt foreign policy instrument.

Short-term success, however, does not guarantee long-term advancement. The vast majority of Mr. Trump’s deregulation agenda has been achieved through executive order. “But regulatory restraint that relies on presidential discretion is fragile,” Mr. Crews observes, because “executive orders can usually (though not always) be rescinded as easily as they are issued.”

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