Policy Alert: 10-1 Deregulation Initiative

Action: Fact sheet: “President Donald J. Trump Launches Massive 10-1 Deregulation Initiative”

What it does: The White House said the President had signed an Executive Order providing that for every new regulation a Federal agency issues, it must “identify at least 10 existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed.” (As of February 3, the text of the Order has not been made available; the White House released only a fact sheet about it.)

Key Insights

• This builds on a rule from the first Trump Administration that for every new regulation issued, two regulations had to be repealed. The Administration claims it eliminated over five regulations for every one issued in the President’s first term.
• The Administration set a requirement for Fiscal Year 2025 that “the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, be significantly less than zero.”
• To assist with compliance with the new policy, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will “ensure standardized measurement and estimation of regulatory costs.”
• In practice, the new policy only requires the identification of rules to be eliminated, not actually eliminating them before new regulations come into force (unless the new regulation is specifically designed to eliminate the old regulations). But OMB will presumably enforce compliance with the policy when it reviews prospective regulations before agencies issue them or publish them for comment.