![Trump signs executive order to reduce regulations](https://www.jurist.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/03/shutterstock_657639088.jpg)
US President Donald Trump signed [press release] an executive order [text] Friday that creates regulatory task forces in every federal agency to look through the regulations and determine which ones “are burdensome to the US economy” and can be removed or consolidated. The task forces should be established within 60 days, and the task forces have 90 days to report progress. The task forces are meant to “seek to repeal regulations that ‘inhibit job creation,’ are ‘ineffective,’ impose costs that exceed benefits or ‘create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with regulatory initiatives and policies.'” Trump has criticized the amount of regulations in the country, declaring that there is a need to reduce them in order to help grow businesses and increase jobs in the US. Critics have said that such an effort to reduce regulations will impact clean air and water initiatives and impact the safety of food.
Trump had previously signed [JURIST report] an executive order to cut regulations in January. That executive order required that two regulations are eliminated for every new regulation that is enacted. These are just two in a series of executive orders [JURIST backgrounder] that Trump has signed since taking office. Earlier in January the president signed an executive order to withdraw the US [JURIST report] from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim Nations signed a year ago. Also in January Trump signed [JURIST report] an order preventing foreign non-governmental organizations from receiving US funding if they provide abortions or promote policies that may lead to abortions. Trump has also addressed immigration in his orders, signing an order [JURIST report] that withholds federal funding to cities that provide safe haven to illegal immigrants and another directing the construction of a wall along the US and Mexican border and an increase in the number of enforcement officials to remove undocumented immigrants.