Every rule Washington writes carries a price tag, and for years that price kept climbing. By the end of the last administration, new federal rules had added roughly $1.8 trillion in costs — about $10,000 per household, with EPA rules alone accounting for more than $1.3 trillion. For a small business, compliance is not an abstraction: the owner spends weeks a year on paperwork, permits and reporting instead of serving customers. Deregulation is the effort to give that money and time back.
The Ten-for-One Rule
The centerpiece is Executive Order 14192, signed in January 2025, which requires agencies to eliminate ten regulations for every new one they issue — and to keep the total cost of new rules below zero. In its first eight months the administration reported 646 deregulatory actions against five new rules, a ratio of 129 to 1, with claimed savings of $211.8 billion. The fiscal 2026 plan goes further: 702 rules targeted for elimination and $1.5 trillion in projected savings. The Federal Register tells the same story in pages: 107,262 in 2024, down to 61,584 in 2025.
Where the Savings Come From
The biggest savings come from energy and environmental rules. The EPA says it finalized more than $1.6 trillion in savings in fiscal 2026, most of it from rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding — worth an estimated $2,400 per new vehicle — and repealing most power-plant greenhouse-gas requirements. Smaller rules matter too: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s narrowing of small-business lending data collection is saving lenders an estimated $186 million a year and nearly five million paperwork hours.
The Bottom Line
Critics note that some of the claimed savings are projections, and that only about a third of the counted actions actually change the Code of Federal Regulations. But for the businesses living under the rules, the direction is what matters: fewer forms, faster permits, lower energy costs — money that can go to wages, hiring and lower prices instead of Washington.