Some Trump Executive Orders On Regulation Need To Be Kept No Matter What

Some see federal regulatory intervention as unaccountable and unrestrained. That was and remains a key focus of the Donald Trump reform agenda.

Executive orders addressing regulatory relief and transparency have enjoyed some staying power even as presidential administrations have changed. Principles like cost-benefit analysis have stuck around, in theory at least.

If Donald Trump does not prevail in his challenge of the November 3 election results, new president Joe Biden is expected to immediately undertake make a flurry of unilateral executive actions.

That means he’ll be taking an axe to a number of Trump policies across the board, including reversing rollbacks on regulations. For example, Biden will reverse Trump environmental moves that eased energy production and shrank some national monuments, for starters.

In some areas like antitrust, Biden will be highly active against tech companies like Facebook, but that is a sentiment he shares with the Trump administration. Trump has plenty regulatory passions of his own.

Absolutely set to be chopped in a Biden Administration would be Donald Trump’s infamous executive order directing agencies to eliminate two rules for every one added while freezing regulatory costs (E.O. 13,771, Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs). No way that one would stick around. Neither the far-progressive wing, nor even Biden’s purportedly more moderate agenda would ever permit that.

The mechanics of the offsets the Trump administration used to claim success in one-in, two-out came under the inevitable criticism, but the essence of the campaign is primarily a cost freeze if one goes back and reads the order; and well—Democrats don’t want anything to do with freezing regulation.

Read the full article at Forbes.