If the business of America is business, then the business of President Trump is putting America back in business.
Days after being sworn back into office, President Trump issued the Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation and Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s DOGE Deregulatory Initiative executive orders, which are freeing American businesses from the chains of unnecessary, burdensome federal regulation. The guiding philosophy of these orders is that for every new regulation proposed by a federal agency, 10 existing regulations should be eliminated. And it directed the heads of all executive departments and agencies to identify certain categories of unlawful and potentially unlawful regulations within 60 days and begin plans to repeal them.
Freeing Americans from regulatory burdens can’t come fast enough.
The total cost of federal regulations is more than $3 trillion per year, a staggering amount equal to 12 percent of total US GDP. The pages in the Code of Federal Regulations have skyrocketed over the last 75 years from a few thousand to now over 180,000. Additionally, the Biden administration added rules that amount to a crushing $1.8 trillion in costs and 339 million paperwork hours for businesses to comply with.
The saying that came out of the 2008 crash was “too big to fail,” but crippling regulatory expenses have made many small businesses “too small to succeed.” Small businesses constitute a critical part of our economy, independence, and innovation — and they struggled like never before under four years of Bidenomics.
Small businesses were hit by the 2020 lockdowns worse than almost anyone else. While large businesses had enough in reserves to survive the prolonged, unnecessary economic disruption, millions of small businesses were crushed or irreparably damaged. Anything that gets small- and mid-sized businesses thriving is a lifeline to ordinary people trying to live the American dream.
The SBA Office of Advocacy is helping to realize the president’s deregulatory agenda. We advance the views and concerns of small business before Congress, the White House, federal agencies, federal courts and state policymakers. By conducting small-business outreach, participating in the federal regulatory process and helping agencies develop less burdensome regulations, we amplify the voice of small-business owners in the regulatory space.
We hold small-business meetings around the nation and bring input back to Washington, D.C. I’ve had the privilege of conducting business listening sessions from Billings, Montana, to Cedar City, Utah — asking small-business owners directly what pain points or time wastes they experience with respect to federal regulation, and how we can streamline the process to facilitate industry rather than standing in its way.
We’ve even created a red tape hotline to act as a direct pipeline to hear the concerns of small businesses: 1-800-827-5722.
These actions have resulted in the elimination of $48.1 billion in regulatory burden in the first 100 days alone of President Trump’s administration.
The more we free Americans from the burden of federal regulations, the more economic prosperity we will all enjoy. Of course, we’re not saying we want to live in a country where the government fails to provide any oversight, but there is a world of difference between the government providing appropriate guard rails for safety and the nightmarish web of regulatory red tape we have been plagued with by so many policymakers over the last several decades.
In just a few months under President Trump’s leadership, his economic and deregulatory policies have sent the economy roaring back into action. The president has hailed “200 days of winning,” which is no exaggeration. Despite the naysaying of some, tariffs haven’t caused an economic earthquake; instead, they’ve provided leverage for better trade deals, spawned trillions of dollars in investment commitments to our country and flooded our treasury with revenue. Stocks are all on the rise, with the S&P 500 up about 500 points for the year. Buying a home is finally becoming more affordable again. Consumers are happier and the economy grew 3% in Q2.
Under President Trump’s leadership, America is back in business.