On Balance: Will Trump 2.0’s Deregulatory Track Record Be Different?
The views presented in On Balance are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Society, its Board, or its members.
This post is part of a series on President Trump’s deregulatory record and what we might expect in the new administration.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that his first Administration achieved an unparalleled reduction in federal regulations. He has boasted, for example, that 25,000 pages of “job-destroying regulations” had been removed—more than under any previous President, he has said. Yet an examination of the Code of Federal Regulations, the authoritative repository of binding federal rules, tells a different story.
While the growth in regulatory pages slowed during his term, the total volume increased by about 1,500 pages. Similarly, Trump’s claim of a 10-to-1 ratio of deregulatory to regulatory actions was far from the mark. When examining the government’s Unified Regulatory Agenda, the actual overall ratio was 3 regulatory actions to every 1 deregulatory one. It was 2 to 1 when focusing on economically significant regulations—again, with more regulatory actions than ones classified by the Administration as deregulatory. In reality, as detailed in a report I co-authored at the end of Trump’s first term, that earlier Administration saw, on average, more regulatory actions classified as economically significant per year than any President's first term in modern history. (It tied with the overall average across all eight years of President Obama.)
Will the second Trump Administration accomplish more deregulation than the first?
That answer will likely depend on the similarities and differences between the two Administrations. This time, Trump and his team have the advantage of lessons learned during the first term and the opportunity of developing their strategy over the past four years. With a more prepared transition team and the ability to revive prior executive orders and guidance, the new Administration is poised to hit the ground running. In addition, Trump’s allies in the private sector, such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have pledged to help support deregulatory efforts through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The legal landscape has also shifted significantly since 2017. Recent Supreme Court decisions, such as Loper Bright Enterprises (2024), which overturned Chevron deference, and West Virginia v. EPA (2022), which established the major questions doctrine, have altered the law governing agency action. These rulings are widely perceived to limit agencies’ ability to adopt new regulations that courts conclude have “vast economic and political consequences”—at least absent very clear congressional authority. It remains to be seen what these rulings will mean for agencies’ ability to take rules off the books, which ostensibly are governed by the same legal standards. Nevertheless, a Supreme Court that is more skeptical toward government regulation appears likely to embolden a second Trump Administration to pursue more ambitious deregulation in the hope that the judiciary will ultimately be more deferential to deregulatory efforts than they have been to regulatory ones.
Despite these differences, many obstacles that likely impeded the first Trump Administration remain. Trump’s leadership style—marked by an apparent preference for immediate symbolic victories over sustained implementation—could once again undermine needed momentum. Internal conflicts within the Administration may persist, as suggested by the recent public clash between Elon Musk and Laura Loomer over H-1 B visa policies, complicating managerial coherence and momentum.
Structural and legislative constraints will also continue to pose challenges. The Administrative Procedure Act still requires agencies to follow a notice-and-comment process before repealing rules. Congress’s numerous statutory mandates remain intact that call for so many of the regulations on the books. Although Republicans control both chambers of Congress, their narrow margins in each house and the Senate filibuster will likely limit their ability to pass sweeping revisions. Recent episodes, such as the budget negotiations that required bipartisan support and the internal GOP wrangling over re-electing Speaker Mike Johnson, underscore the fragile nature of the Republican majority.
All things considered, it remains uncertain whether the reality of deregulation during a second Trump term can match the ambitions that candidate and President-elect Trump has articulated. If the first Trump Administration is any guide, bold claims of regulatory rollbacks may again outpace actual achievements. As a result, even if the second Administration differs from the first, analysts and members of the public have reason to wonder whether “Trump 2.0” will deliver substantial enough substantive regulatory changes to yield very much by way of overall impact on the broad economy.
Cary Coglianese is the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as the founding director of the Penn Program on Regulation and as the faculty advisor to The Regulatory Review. The above commentary draws on Professor Coglianese's presentation at the Society for Benefit Cost Analysis’s January 4, 2025 panel at the Allied Social Science Association meeting in San Francisco on “Looking Ahead: What to Watch for in U.S. Regulatory Policy in the New Administration.”
This blog does a nice job of bringing evidence to bear on a highly charged issue. I would like to add a minor point about the characterization of Federal regulations as "job-killing." Most major Federal regulations are required to have their benefits and costs analyzed and regulations only proceed if benefits are estimated to outweigh costs. So, while a regulation might reduce employment in some part of the economy, that is kill some jobs, it also will have been found to generate benefits that offset those job losses as well as the other costs of the regulation. This requirement that the aggregate benefits of a regulation outweigh aggregate costs has been in place since the Reagan Administration and has been supported by subsequent administrations of both political parties. It also applies to removing existing regulations as well as to introducing new ones. Thus, a regulation that actually reduces employment without producing adequate offsetting benefits would have been very unlikely to have been approved and deserved to be repealed if it had. In the meantime, it is worth remembering that most major Federal regulations have been estimated to generate net benefits.