Larry Kudlow: Let’s not forget the economic benefits of deregulation

In case you didn’t see it, please go back and read the print edition of the Saturday Wall Street Journal entitled “Trump Ushers In ‘New High Water Mark’ for Deregulation.” It’s an incredibly important news story that has almost been overlooked.

The piece talks about slashing environmental rules and bank oversight, removing barriers to cryptocurrencies, and reversing the Bidens war against fossil fuels. In a single day, the Environmental Protection Agency announced 31 actions to deregulate U.S. environmental policies, including rules for power plants, oil and gas industry, electric vehicles, and waste water.

Big hat tip to the Wall Street Journal newsroom for running this story. President Trump has issued 107 executive orders in 67 days. More than any other president in history, and many of these orders have deregulated the economy. The President himself has often suggested that lowering regulations is more important than lowering taxes. I’ll reserve judgement on that one, but his point is well taken: dropping regulatory barriers is a boom to business and economic growth.

Reducing regulatory costs is especially helpful to small business that don’t have the financial resources to hire legions of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists to fight Uncle Sam. The Wall Street Journal story chronicles the SEC backing away from Biden’s ‘Green New Deal’ climate-related rules (Biden’s comptroller of the currency and his Federal Reserve supervisors were pushing ESG and DEI instead of bank loans).

In fact, the appointment of Michelle Bowman as the new Fed Vice Chair for Bank Supervision is a huge plus: she’s likely to reopen the door to old fashioned commercial and industrial loans, which have been so scarce in recent years, especially to medium and small businesses. And she’ll stop the war against fossil fuels.

Additionally, the Interior and Housing and Urban Development Departments are aiming to streamline regulations to spur the construction of housing on millions of acres of federal land.

Turning back to President Trump’s remarkable volume of executive orders, he is aiming to put his transformational stamp on so many key areas of American life: the economy, trade, foreign policy, the military, energy, culture, border, and crime.

In every case, his emphasis is on common sense actions, to make America a better place to live, work, raise a family, and be proud of our patriotic heritage. 

Good for him.