President Donald Trump announced plans to cut regulations by 75 percent or more on Monday during his first official meeting in the White House.
Trump met with business leaders from top companies, promising to cut corporate tax rates and rein in regulations.
"We are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies," Trump said. "And that’s massively. We’re trying to get it down to anywhere from 15 to 20 percent." The United States currently has one of the highest marginal corporate tax rates in the world at over 38 percent.
Trump said cutting regulations would be even more important than reducing taxes.
"A bigger thing, and that surprised me, is the fact that we are going to be cutting regulation massively," he said. "Now we are going to have regulation and it will be just as strong and just as good and just as protective of the people as the regulation we have right now. The problem with the regulation you have right now is that you can’t do anything."
"We think we can cut regulations by 75 percent," Trump said. "Maybe more."
In one of his first acts as president, Trump ordered a freeze on all pending regulations Friday, a stark reversal to the previous administration that added a record 97,110 pages to the Federal Register. Nearly 4,000 new rules were finalized under President Obama, at an estimated cost of nearly $350 billion.
Trump met with executives from major companies, including Ford Motor Company, U.S. Steel, Lockheed Martin, Dell Technologies, Dow Chemical, and SpaceX.