President Trump's Latest Executive Order: For Every New Regulation, 2 Go Away

President Trump ordered Monday that two existing regulations must be repealed every time a new one is implemented by his administration.

Trump signed the executive order after a meeting he had with small business leaders. They surrounded the president as he put pen to paper in the White House.

“This will be the biggest such act that our country has ever seen,” Trump said just before signing the order in the Oval Office. “There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be a normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily. And that's what our country has been all about.”

He said the order will ease the burdens on small businesses.

“If you have a regulation you want, No. 1, we’re not gonna approve it because it’s already been approved probably in 17 different forms,” Trump said during the signing. “But if we do, the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation. So if there’s a new regulation, they have to knock out two.”

A senior White House administration official called the order the “most significant administrative action in the world of regulatory reform since President Reagan created OIRA in 1981.”

The order calls for agencies to identify "at least two" existing regulations to be repealed every time they implement a new one. It also says the net cost of new regulations "shall be no greater than zero" after the other two new regulations are repealed.

"We’ll be reducing them big league and their damaging effects on our small businesses, our economy, our entrepreneurial spirit,” Trump said about regulations. “And it’s been very badly damaged. So the American dream is back.”

Image via the White House