Trump wants to reduce regulations—everyone should help him

President Trump has made deregulation a priority and charged Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with suggesting ways to cut red tape. Some progressives are cautiously supportive of deregulation. More should be.

From Jimmy Carter to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), progressives once saw the wisdom of cutting red tape — especially if that tape tied the hands of consumers and would-be competitors in order to privilege industry insiders.

After the election, Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, encouraged Democrats to embrace “supply-side progressivism,” calling for “limited deregulation that advances liberal policy goals.” He pointed to successful Democratic candidates like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine), both of whom have raised the alarm about overregulation.

Vice President Kamala Harris recognized that the regulatory state sometimes hurts those whom it is supposed to help. In campaign proposals to address the housing crisis, she vowed to “take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels.”

Cautious Democratic support for deregulation may surprise those who think only of the Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) approach. Warren once claimed that “deregulation” was “just a code word for ‘let the rich guys do whatever they want.’”

In reality, regulations often help the rich guys at the expense of consumers and fair competition. New Deal regulations, for example, forced prices up in more than 500 industries, causing consumers to pay more for necessities like food and clothing when a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Economists have documented similar price-raising regulation in agricultural, finance and urban transportation. In other cases, regulations require customers to buy certain products such as health insurance. Licensing rules protect incumbent service providers in hundreds of occupations despite little evidence that they protect consumers from harm.

More subtly, regulations can protect industry insiders by limiting the quantity of available services. State certificate-of-need laws in health care, for example, limit dozens of medical services in two-thirds of states, raising prices, throttling access, and undermining the quality of care.

That’s one reason why Rhode Island’s Democratic governor wants to reform his state’s certificate-of-need laws.

If you don’t believe that regulations protect big businesses instead of their customers, take a closer look at how firms lobby. In 2012, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association lobbied to maintain a ban on incandescent light bulbs. Why? Because it raised the costs of smaller, rival firms that specialized in making the cheaper bulbs. Local car dealerships lobby to preserve state restrictions on direct car sales, which limit potential competitors that sell online.

In international comparisons, researchers find that heavier regulatory burdens depress productivity growth and contribute to income inequality.

In the U.S., the accumulation of regulations between 1980 and 2012 is estimated to have reduced income per person by about $13,000. Since low-income households tend to spend a greater share of their incomes on highly regulated products, they bear the heaviest burden.

Progressives can help break the symbiotic relationship between special interests and overregulation. Indeed, they’ve often been the first to identify the problem.

Writing a century ago in his book “The New Freedom,” President Woodrow Wilson warned that “regulatory capture” would grow as government itself grew: “If the government is to tell big businessmen how to run their business, then don’t you see that big businessmen have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it?”

The capture Wilson warned of took root. By the early 1970s, progressive consumer advocates Mark Green and Ralph Nader were noting that “regulated industries are often in clear control of the regulatory process.” The problem was so acute that President Jimmy Carter tapped economist Alfred Kahn to do something about it.

In his research, Kahn meticulously showed that when “a [regulatory] commission is responsible for the performance of an industry, it is under never completely escapable pressure to protect the health of the companies it regulates.” As head of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Kahn moved to dismantle regulations that sustained anti-consumer airline cartels. Then he helped abolish the board altogether.

Liberals such as Nader and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) supported the move. Kennedy’s top committee lawyer, future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, later noted that the only ones opposed to deregulation were regulators and industry executives.

Their reform efforts unleashed competitive forces in aviation that had previously been impossible, opening up airline routes, lowering fares and increasing options for consumers.

It’s an embarrassing truth for both Democrats and Republicans that none of Carter’s successors, including Ronald Reagan, have pushed back as much as he did against the regulatory state.

Trump faces an uphill battle. He’ll stand a better chance if progressives acknowledge once again that lower-income Americans stand to gain from deregulation.

Related Topics:#FraserInstitute #GovernmentRegulations #MatthewMitchell DOGE GovernmentEfficiency RedTape TrumpDeregulation

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Scott Bessent says U.S., Ukraine “ready to sign” rare earths deal

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Scott Bessent says U.S., Ukraine “ready to sign” rare earths deal

Published on April 30, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Quick Hit:

During Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. is prepared to move forward with a minerals agreement with Ukraine. President Trump has framed the deal as a way to recover U.S. aid and establish an American presence to deter Russian threats.

Key Details:

Bessent confirmed during a Cabinet meeting that the U.S. is “ready to sign this afternoon,” even as Ukrainian officials introduced last-minute changes to the agreement. “We’re sure that they will reconsider that,” he added during the Cabinet discussion.
Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko was reportedly in Washington on Wednesday to iron out remaining details with American officials.
The deal is expected to outline a rare earth mineral partnership between Washington and Kyiv, with Ukrainian Armed Forces Lt. Denis Yaroslavsky calling it a potential turning point: “The minerals deal is the first step. Ukraine should sign it on an equal basis. Russia is afraid of this deal.”

Diving Deeper:

The United States is poised to sign a long-anticipated rare earth minerals agreement with Ukraine, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. According to Bessent, Ukrainians introduced “last minute changes” late Tuesday night, complicating the final phase of negotiations. Still, he emphasized the U.S. remains prepared to move forward: “We’re sure that they will reconsider that, and we are ready to sign this afternoon.”

As first reported by Ukrainian media and confirmed by multiple Ukrainian officials, Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko is in Washington this week for the final stages of negotiations. “We are finalizing the last details with our American colleagues,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told Telemarathon.

The deal follows months of complex talks that nearly collapsed earlier this year. In February, President Trump dispatched top officials, including Bessent, to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine to hammer out terms. According to officials familiar with the matter, Trump grew frustrated when Kyiv initially refused U.S. conditions. Still, the two sides ultimately reached what Bessent described as an “improved” version of the deal by late February.

The effort nearly fell apart again during Zelensky’s February 28th visit to the White House, where a heated Oval Office exchange between the Ukrainian president, Trump, and Vice President JD Vance led to Zelensky being removed from the building and the deal left unsigned.

Despite those setbacks, the deal appears to be back on track. While no public text of the agreement has been released, the framework is expected to center on U.S.-Ukraine cooperation in extracting rare earth minerals—resources vital to modern manufacturing, electronics, and defense technologies.

President Trump has publicly defended the arrangement as a strategic and financial win for the United States. “We want something for our efforts beyond what you would think would be acceptable, and we said, ‘rare earth, they’re very good,’” he said during the Cabinet meeting. “It’s also good for them, because you’ll have an American presence at the site and the American presence will keep a lot of bad actors out of the country—or certainly out of the area where we’re doing the digging.”

Trump has emphasized that the deal would serve as a form of “security guarantee” for Ukraine, providing a stabilizing American footprint amid ongoing Russian aggression. He framed it as a tangible return on the billions in U.S. aid sent to Kyiv since the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion.

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New federal government plans to run larger deficits and borrow more money than predecessor’s plan

Published on April 30, 2025

Todayville

Fr0m the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

The only difference, despite all the rhetoric regarding change and Prime Minister Carney’s criticism of the Trudeau government’s fiscal approach, is that the Carney government plans to run larger deficits and borrow more money.

As part of his successful election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised a “very different approach” to fiscal policy than that of the Trudeau government. But when you peel back the rhetoric and look at his plan for deficits and debt, things begin to look eerily similar—if not worse.

The Carney government’s “responsible” new approach is centered around the idea of “spending less” in order to “invest more.” The government plans to separate spending into two budgets: the operating budget (which appears to include bureaucrat salaries, cash transfers and benefits) and the capital budget (which includes any spending that “builds an asset”). The government plans to balance the operating budget by 2028/29 (meaning operating spending will be fully covered by revenues) while funding the capital budget through borrowing.

Aside from the fact that this clearly complicates federal finances, this “very different” approach to spending actually represents more of the same by continuing to pursue endless borrowing and a larger role for the government in the economy.

The chart below compares projected annual federal budget balances for the next four years, from both the 2024 Fall Economic Statement (FES)—the Trudeau government’s last fiscal update—and the 2025 Liberal Party platform. Importantly, deficits from the 2025 platform show the overall budget balance including both operating and capital spending.

CanvasJS.com

Let’s start with the similarities.

In its final fiscal update last fall, the Trudeau government planned to borrow tens of billions of dollars each year to fund annual spending, with no end in sight. Based on its election platform, the Carney government also plans to run multi-billion-dollar deficits each year with no plan to balance the overall budget. The only difference, despite all the rhetoric regarding change and Prime Minister Carney’s criticism of the Trudeau government’s fiscal approach, is that the Carney government plans to run larger deficits and borrow more money.

In the current fiscal year (2025/26) the Trudeau government had planned to run a $42.2 billion deficit. The Carney government now plans to increase that deficit to $62.3 billion. Trudeau’s most recent fiscal plan forecasted annual deficits from 2025/26 to 2028/29 representing a cumulative $131.4 billion in federal government borrowing. Over that same period, the Carney government now plans to borrow a cumulative $224.8 billion.

The Carney government’s fiscal plan does include a number of tax changes that are expected to lower revenues in years to come—including (but not limited to) a personal income tax cut, the elimination of the GST for some first-time homebuyers, and the cancelling of the planned capital gains tax hike. But even if you exclude these factors from the overall budget, the Carney government still plans to borrow $52.9 billion more than the Trudeau government had planned over the next four years.

By continuing (if not worsening) this same approach of endless borrowing and rising debt, the Carney government will impose real costs on Canadians. Indeed, 16-year-olds can already expect to pay an additional $29,663 in personal income taxes over their lifetime as a result of debt accumulation under the previous federal government, before accounting for the promised increases.

One of the key promises made by Prime Minister Carney is that his government will take a different approach to fiscal policy than his predecessor. While we won’t know for certain until the new government releases its first budget, it appears this approach will continue the same costly habits of endless borrowing and rising debt.