President Trump’s administration has exaggerated the extent of the deregulatory actions he has taken in office, with several of the rules he takes credit for doing away with having started that process under prior presidents, Bloomberg News reported Friday.
Trump announced that his administration had removed 67 regulations at a White House event earlier this month. But a Bloomberg review of those actions found that a third had started under other administrations.
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Other actions had little impact or were part of steps typically taken by the federal government, according to Bloomberg.
At least 22 of the deregulatory actions Trump touted had started under former President Obama.
And several of the rules that the administration had taken credit for ending had not yet gone into effect. Those rules were either delayed or are in the first steps of a long termination process, which means that any successor to Trump could put the regulations back in place.
The administration announced earlier this month that it had withdrawn or delayed 1,579 planned regulatory actions this year.
Trump said at the time that his administration had eliminated 22 rules for every regulation that was added, leading to the tally of 67 deregulatory actions.
“Instead of eliminating two old regulations for every one new regulation, we have eliminated 22; that’s a big difference,” Trump said. “We aimed for 2 for 1 and in 2017 we hit 22 for 1, and by the way, those regulations that are in place do the job better than all the other regulations and they allow us to build and create jobs and do what we have to do.”
The White House did not return multiple requests for comment from Bloomberg.
The Trump administration has made rolling back regulations a key part of its first year as the White House struggled to make legislative victories. Trump signed the GOP tax plan into law earlier this month in his first major win.