Excessive Regulations Leave Us Less Prepared for True Crises

How long before Americans push back on an overbearing administration?

In recent months, governments around the world have been making unprecedented encroachments on how private actors do business, often with disastrous results. In Sri Lanka, an onerous new organic-farming regime was imposed on the nation’s producers, precipitating a serious economic downturn and widespread unrest. Meanwhile, a climate action plan in the Netherlands seeks to cut back on livestock by 30 percent, potentially crippling the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural goods and leading to nationwide protests by farmers. Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the Biden administration has passed nearly a hundred economically significant rules in the president's first year alone, it appears to be business as usual. How long will it be before Americans push back? As the administration continues to kneecap the U.S. economy, they really ought to take a lesson from Sri Lanka and the Netherlands and stop interfering with private industries. It’s a well-established truth that regulation sets back growth more than it helps. But that hasn’t deterred the Biden administration’s regulation spree. A Bloomberg Law study noted that the Biden administration passed 94 economically significant rules (that is, those with an impact on the economy of over $100 million) in his first year in office. This dwarfs the 34 such rules passed by President Donald Trump in his first year and even exceeds the 78 rules passed by President Barack Obama, who was himself not shy about imposing his will through the executive branch. These rules affect such crucial industries as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and transportation. They also expand the scope of the federal government and put stricter requirements on government agencies to only buy American goods and services, regardless of cost, increasing the eventual burden on American taxpayers. The first year of rules alone imposed $201 billion in regulatory burdens on the American people. Heaping costly regulations on the U....