“As of Sept. 22, there have been 1,879 final rules published in the Federal Register, including 243 inherited from Biden. That projects to about 2,590 by year-end — the lowest ever — with the ‘net’ even lower once deregulatory ‘unrules’ are counted,” according to the analysis from Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Trump has made slashing federal regulations a hallmark of his presidency. In his first term, he promised to cut two for every new rule he proposed. In his second presidency, he has promised to raise that to 10 for every new regulation.

In his new analysis, Crews found that Trump actually cut five regulations for every new one in his first term. And, he told Secrets, Trump is doubling that in his second term.

“These are of such a volume that it looks like Trump ought not have any problem meeting the one in, 10 out goals,” Crews said.

The administration has made it easier to keep its promise of deregulation by simply freezing the rulemaking in government.

“The centerpiece of the Trump approach was not so much rules-out tallies as a freeze on net new regulatory costs — an executive-driven regulatory budget unprecedented in the modern era,” Crews wrote for CEI’s blog.

Top aides have focused so much on deregulation that the administration claims it has cut 30 rules for every new one proposed in the first eight months of Trump’s second presidency.

“The administration is demonstrating that we can get by just fine without new rules every single day,” Crews said.

However, he added that some of the president’s executive actions, including issuing trade tariffs, can have the same impact as regulations, though they are not considered federal rules. Crews urged Trump to stay inside the regulatory boundaries so that the effect of his actions can be counted correctly.

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“The only caveats here, as many even in the free market community have pointed out, are Trump’s own regulatory impulses with respect to the likes of live event pricing, tariffs, the Intel federal stake, and more public-private partnerships. These kinds of interventions don’t necessarily show up in the Federal Register for the unified agenda, where we track one in, 10 out. But it certainly makes sense to regard some of them as having rule equivalence. My wish would be that Cabinet members and Congress help put the brakes on some of these swampy aspects and help expand the unambiguously deregulatory moves,” Crews said.

“We’re not yet a year into administration that can literally restore competitive free enterprise and let’s say fair. It ought not be its own enemy in that campaign,” he added.