President Donald Trump’s administration has largely “stopped” issuing innovation-crushing and costly federal regulations, making good on a campaign promise to outdo his first-term deregulation record.
In a half-year review, Trump’s team has done better than its promise to kill 10 Biden regulations for every new one it imposes.
“Conventional federal regulation as we have known it has largely stopped,” said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., the federal expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“At the halfway point of 2025, the federal regulatory machinery is running at an unprecedented crawl,” Crews said. He added, “Indicators like rule counts, Federal Register page totals, and executive orders are crucial metrics of Washington’s regulatory pulse. This year, that pulse is slower than ever before — and that’s by design.”
Trump’s record-low issuance of new regulations is stark by comparison to former President Joe Biden’s practice of governing by regulation. In Biden’s last year, he broke records for new rules and pages in the regulation bible, the Federal Register.
As he did in 2016, Trump campaigned in 2024 on an agenda that included a call for historic levels of deregulation. His plan has been driven by the Office of Management and Budget, which has become extremely stingy with new regulations, according to Crews, the Fred L. Smith fellow in regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and our go-to for accurate counts on new regulations.
“This is seriously unprecedented — regulation has basically stopped, and the world keeps turning as normal,” Crews told Secrets.
In Biden’s last year, the Federal Register hit a record-shattering 106,109 pages, with 3,248 rules, Crews said. “The current pace suggests 2025 may close with only 2,510 rules and around 57,598 pages (by simple linear projection). Register levels have not been that low since the early 1990s. Rule counts have never been so low.”
What’s more, of the 1,255 rules issued so far this year, 243 are attributable to Biden’s last days. That leaves Trump’s “net” at 1,012 rules, and many are “deregulatory pauses, revisions, or withdrawals.”
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While Crews said he wishes Trump would also curb tariffs and price controls, the president has put the Washington swamp of regulators on notice that they aren’t needed much.
“Fewer rules and pages translate to less red tape and less stifling of innovation, potentially unleashing fresh economic dynamism,” he said.
