Trump signs order to cut two federal regulations for every new one

An executive order president Trump signed yesterday makes regulators more circumspect before they propose a new rule.

For every new regulation  agencies would need to identify two others they planned to eliminate to offset costs.

The ''one in, two out'' order comes as the Trump administration's first attempt to rein in federal regulations and their associated spending to benefit businesses.

''This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen,'' Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed the order, surrounded by small business owners, according to Politico. ''There will be regulation. There will be control. But it will be normalized control.''

During his campaign and his first days in office, Trump vowed to cut 75 per cent of regulations to help both big and small businesses and he and his staff said yesterday that ''one in, two out'' was just the start.

However, according to critics, the order was an attack on public protections and a solution with a catchy banner in search of a problem.

The order aimed to limit federal regulations and establish an annual cap on the cost of new regulations. For the rest of fiscal year 2017, the order required legislators seeking a new rule to identify two existing ones they planned to eliminate. They would report to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which reviewed major regulations.

Senior administration officials described it as the ''most significant administrative action in the world of regulatory reform since president Reagan created the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in 1981."

According to consumer rights groups the effects of the executive order could be disastrous.

''It's horrifying that even after the Wall Street crash, the massive BP oil spill and numerous other public health and safety disasters across the country due to a lack of strong regulations, Americans will once again have to pay the price for the consequences of corporate recklessness, greed and lawbreaking,'' Robert Weissman, the president of the group Public Citizen, said in a statement on Monday. ''This [executive order] is just the next and most arbitrary attack in a litany of attacks against public protections.''