For all its bluster about canceling a record number of regulations across the federal government, the Trump administration has only erased a handful of big-ticket rules more than a year into his second term, according to a review by Bloomberg Law.
The White House has repeatedly claimed historic results on cutting red tape, ranging from President Donald Trump’s assertions during his State of the Union address that his team eliminated “a record number of job-killing regulations” to a statement touting 2025 as the “best deregulation year in history.”
On the surface, the White House’s claims are backed by some impressive statistics: the Office of Management and Budget reported that the administration finalized 646 deregulatory actions that saved about $211.8 billion through the end of October and far outpaced Trump’s target of cutting 10 existing regulations for every new one.
But a closer look at the numbers shows that, with a few notable exceptions, the final actions are relatively minor and will only affect small groups of citizens or companies. A Bloomberg Law analysis found that at least 17 of the administration’s deregulatory actions through March 18 were classified as economically significant by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, meaning they’re expected to affect the economy by at least $100 million—far from the broad, economy-rattling overhaul Trump has promised…
Big-Ticket Items
Regulatory experts say the administration’s biggest swing is the EPA’s withdrawal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding, one of the economically significant unrules finalized after the OMB’s 2025 report was published. That rescission—which is being challenged in court by a coalition of more than three dozen states and localities—dismantles the legal basis the EPA has used to regulate six gases widely understood to contribute to climate change.
The EPA called the unwinding “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” saying it will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion.
“If it holds up in court, it will lead to specific deregulatory actions that will be very significant for the economy and the environment,” said Stuart Shapiro, a public policy professor at Rutgers University, pointing to the ending of fuel economy standards for cars and emissions rules for power plants…
Too Soon to Say?
Coglianese said the administration’s overhyping of its regulatory record echoes the overpromises and underdelivery of Trump’s first term. In a 2020 academic paper Coglianese co-wrote with Shapiro and Natasha Sarin of Yale Law School, the scholars found that Trump also failed to meet his deregulatory expectations throughout his entire first term.