WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday said his administration was answering "a call to action" by rolling back regulations on environmental protections, health care, financial services and other industries as he made a push to showcase his accomplishments near the end of his first year in office.
The remarks highlighted an area where Mr. Trump has perhaps done more to change the policies of his predecessor than any other, with regulatory shifts that have affected wide swaths of the economy.
"We are just getting started," Mr. Trump said, speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He described progress so far as the "most far-reaching regulatory reform" in United States history, a claim he did not back up.
"We have decades of excess regulation to remove," he added. "To help launch the next phase of growth, prosperity and freedom, I am challenging my cabinet to find and remove every single outdated, unlawful and excessive regulation on the books."
Echoing his days as a real estate developer with the flair of a ground breaking, Mr. Trump used an oversized pair of scissors to cut a ribbon his staff had set up in front of two piles of paper, representing government regulations in 1960, (20,000 pages, he said), and today — a pile that was about six feet tall (said to be 185,000 pages).
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His efforts have brought cheers from the business community, most notably from companies that will benefit from the rollbacks.
But they have also generated fierce pushback from state attorneys general and environmental groups who say that pulling back regulations has left the environment more vulnerable to pollution and consumers with fewer of the protections that were adopted after the financial crisis.
The president said that for every new regulation adopted, his administration has killed 22, a claim that some experts in regulation said was difficult to verify, but which he said was far more than the two rules killed for each new one that he pledged earlier this year.
The president also said little about the impact of his actions, which have created opportunities for regulated industries that supported his campaign — and that in many cases have played a direct a role in orchestrating the changes through their lobbying efforts.
In no part of government have the consequences of Mr. Trump's efforts to reverse the actions of the Obama administration been more apparent than in the Environmental Protection Agency. But the reach of the actions were pronounced even on Thursday, when the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal Obama era regulations known as net neutrality, which prohibit internet service providers from blocking or charging websites for higher-quality service.
Still, several economic indicators — and comments from companies large and small — suggest that a shift in federal regulatory policy is building business confidence and accelerating economic growth.
A survey of chief executives released this month by the Business Roundtable found that, for the first time in six years, executives did not cite regulation as the top cost pressure facing their companies.
"C.E.O.s appear to be responding to the administration's energetic focus on regulation," Joshua Bolten, the roundtable's president, said this month.
While Mr. Trump spoke of the rollback with his now familiar use of superlatives, he has exaggerated the overall impact. In several cases, state attorneys general or environmental groups have been able to stop the immediate rollbacks and the ultimate outcome may be decided in federal courts, where his administration faces dozens of legal challenges.
"This is certainly indicative of an attitude toward public pronouncements that comes from the top of the administration to maximize accomplishments and exaggerate them as much as possible," said Stuart Shapiro, a professor at Rutgers University who served from 1998 to 2003 in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Republican and Democratic administrations.
Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, has filed at least seven lawsuits to challenge what he considers illegal attempts by the Trump administration to delay or repeal regulations that protect the environment, students and public health. Federal judges have already ruled in favor of Mr. Becerra in at least two of these cases, a hint that the fight over many of these efforts by Mr. Trump is only beginning.
On Thursday, Mr. Becerra added another lawsuit, moving to sue the Department of Education, alleging that it was illegally delaying an Obama-era regulation known as the Borrowers Defense Rule, which allows for loan forgiveness for students if they were defrauded or misled by their college.
"It is a mirage more than a miracle," Mr. Becerra said Thursday in an interview, referring to the benefits to American society that Mr. Trump said have been gained by the regulatory rollbacks. "Where these rollbacks might succeed, it will be at the expense of college students who are trying to get a real degree and not a sham degree and don't want to see their student loan debt increase because they have been defrauded."
The most permanent part of the regulatory rollback — with Mr. Trump's support — has come via acts of Congress, which used a power known as the Congressional Review Act it to eliminate more than a dozen Obama-era initiatives, including one that was intended to prevent people with mental disabilities from buying guns. The review act, which had been used only once before the Trump administration, can nullify federal regulations for 60 legislative days after they have been finalized with a simple majority vote.
But as the documents released Thursday show, individual federal agencies have heard the White House's call to reconsider a broad array of regulations, even though these agencies must go through a time-consuming process to repeal any rule.
Coal mining has been an area of particular attention.
The E.P.A., in addition to moving to reconsider a landmark Obama-era climate change rule that would have effectively forced the shutdown of dozens of coal-burning power plants, has separately moved to reconsider a rule that requires new precautions for the disposal of coal ash, a step taken after a series of accidents involving coal-ash ponds. The agency also has separately moved to delay the implementation of a rule intended to prevent damage to aquatic life as a result of water discharges from power plants, including those that burn coal. Congress repealed a measure intended to limit coal mining from destroying area streams.
The Department of Interior repealed a moratorium on new leases of federal land for coal mining, and began the process of rejecting rules intended to increase royalty payments coal mining companies must pay to the federal government for coal extracted from this federal land.
In the early summer, just as a rule to put new limits on beryllium, an industrial mineral linked to lung disease, went into effect, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed a rule to revoke some of its provisions. This fall, the Department of Health and Human Services issued two rules rolling back a federal mandate that employers include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans.
To help with the deregulatory effort, Mr. Trump in February ordered agencies to create teams to identify rules that could be cut. Some appointees to those task forces, which have been criticized for their secrecy, have been found to be reviewing rules that their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and others may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone.
And, while the rule-making process can take years, some actions that deeply affect how companies are regulated have come faster in the form of executive orders, including Mr. Trump's order demanding that agencies rescind two regulations for each new rule issued, as well as guidance and memos at the agency level.
The Justice Department this year announced it would significantly scale back a number of programs, including an Obama-era initiative meant to improve relations between police departments and the communities they serve — much to the dismay of some of the police chiefs who participated in the program. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees the nation's biggest banks, has been easing restrictions on those banks without having to write new regulations — even changing policy in footnotes of government manuals.
And a New York Times investigation recently found that, under Mr. Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency has adopted a more lenient approach to polluters than the previous two administrations, with significant declines both in the number of overall cases filed, as well as in fines and environmental repairs. That enforcement slowdown has coincided with major policy changes ordered by the team of Scott Pruitt, the agency's administrator, after pleas from oil and gas industry executives, according to internal documents obtained by The Times.
"That is some of the biggest deregulatory action," said Mr. Shapiro, explaining that, while a slowdown in enforcement was not technically a rollback of regulations, it could deeply affect how companies are regulated on a day-to-day basis. "It sets the expectation for businesses that the cop is not on the beat."
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