Regulatory Drag Down 0.07% Under Trump

Katherin Timpf of National Review reports that Donald Trump's first year of "deregulation" saved a total of $1.3 billion economy-wide over the last year. (That's a YUGE four bucks per person!) Her rather generous conclusion follows:

Will that extra Big Mac burning a hole in your wallet lead to, say, competing postal carriers? I doubt it. (Image via Wikimedia Commons.)

Really, the only bad thing about all of this is that it doesn't go even further. As the Wheaton Business Journal notes, it costs Americans a whopping $1.9 trillion to comply with federal regulations every year. President Trump's administration has already been eliminating those regulations in record numbers, but let's just hope that this trend continues so that we can give businesses -- and the Americans associated with them -- the best shot at financial prosperity.

Amen! was my first thought, but then cold logic kicked in. I did the math, and remembered further a couple of problems with both the trimming-around-the-edges amount and the President's "a pen and a phone" method. Not only can this tiny amount of progress be undone by the next abuser of executive orders, both of the shortcomings are symptomatic of his -- and his party's -- unprincipled approach to the whole question of regulation.

Consider the fact that nobody in power even questions the propriety of economic regulation. How much regulation is "too much" to such a person? And if such a person does not see that the government ought to be protecting our right to make our own decisions -- the exact opposite of dictating to us what we ought to do? Why would he adopt the agenda we clearly need, which is a systematic phasing out of regulation altogether, with standards bodies and watchdog groups (for example) taking over those legitimate activities that have been subsumed by government regulators -- and which gives the whole idea of regulation a false credibility it doesn't deserve?

To be fair, I think both the rollbacks and the perception of a decreasing regulatory burden have helped the economy in other ways. But why stop there? Why not consider the question more deeply and adopt a principled, systematic approach that will truly protect American rights and foster prosperity? Until and unless Trump or a significant political faction adopts a principled, individual rights-based opposition to regulation, we can expect any such effort to bring about small, short-term gains, and ultimately fizzle.

-- CAV