On Monday, January 30, 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs. The EO is aimed at cutting regulations and fees to assist small and large businesses. In each agency, for every one regulation that is issued, the agency must identify two regulations to be repealed.

This EO comes after the White House issued a memo to the heads of executive branch departments and agencies freezing all pending regulatory actions. The EPA has delayed 30 regulatory actions.

“This will be the largest ever cut by far in terms of regulation,” President Trump told press on Monday. “If there’s a new regulation they have to knock out two, but it goes far beyond that. We’re cutting regulations massively for small business and for large business, but they’re different…and that’s what this is about today.”

According to the EO, any costs associated with new regulations must be “offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least two prior regulations.”

With the EO, agencies can expect the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to provide them a total amount of costs that will be allowed for each agency to issue new regulations and to repeal regulations for the next year as well as guidance on:

• Processes for standardizing the measurement and estimation of regulatory costs;
• Standards for determining what qualifies as new and offsetting regulations;
• Standards for determining the costs of existing regulations that are considered for elimination;
• Processes for accounting for costs in different fiscal years;
• Methods to oversee the issuance of rules with costs offset by savings at different times or different agencies; and
• Emergencies and other circumstances that might justify individual waivers of the requirements of this section.

Find the EO reducing regulation here.