Trump’s ‘Epic’ Deregulation Must Preserve Financial Stability
The president-elect and Elon Musk want to blow up the federal rule book. Good luck, but please exercise some caution.
Now for the hard part.
Photographer: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg
Given that he was just elected, Donald Trump’s plans for financial regulation are, like so much else, a mystery. Yet his campaign’s disdain for the administrative state — and the public’s growing exasperation with red tape — suggests the country is in for a period of bureaucratic humility. Here’s hoping the financial system doesn’t become vulnerable as a result.
Under President Joe Biden, federal agencies have issued new rules at a historic pace. These proposals were presumably well-intentioned, and some were worthy of support, but their sheer volume — 284 economically significant rules through August — has imposed a serious burden and spurred fed-up businesses to bring a slew of lawsuits, many of them successful. (Voters share the outrage: There’s a reason the death of an Instagram-famous squirrel at the hands of state regulators became a cause célèbre in the campaign’s final days.)