President Donald Trump has signed an executive order designed to cut the number of regulations affecting small businesses.
It is just the latest in a flurry of decisions made by President Trump in his first few days in office.
He signed the order in front of a group of business people, saying it was aimed at “cutting regulations massively for small business”.
It was the “biggest such act that our country has ever seen,” he added. Speaking in the Oval Office, he said he wanted to tell small business owners that the “American dream is back” and that he would “create an environment for small business,” by ending or limiting existing regulations.
The president said a large proportion of the American workforce was employed by small businesses, therefore: “We want to make life easier for these small business owners.”
Described as a “two-out, one-in” approach, the latest executive order asked government departments which request a new regulation to specify two other regulations which they will drop. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will manage the regulations and is expected to be led by the Republican Mick Mulvaney.
Some categories of regulation will be exempt from the “two-out, one-in” clause – such as those dealing with the military and national security and “any other category of regulations exempted by the Director”.
The executive order says the cost of planned regulations must be “prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process” and that it shall be up to the Director to define how the costs are measured and “what qualifies as new and offsetting regulations”.
This latest move comes as many companies criticised the President’s US travel ban on immigration from seven countries introduced last Friday.
Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein left a voicemail for employees saying it was “not a policy we support”, and executives at the car maker Ford had the same message for their workers. A host of tech firms – Facebook, Google and Air BnB amongst others have also voiced concerns.
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