Small Businesses Thriving as Trump Wages War on Costly Red Tape

The Trump administration logged more than $110 billion in regulatory
cost savings for small businesses in 2025, the direct result of a
targeted effort to cut unnecessary red tape – building on one of the
hallmarks of Trump’s first term. If that progress is a sign of things to
come, American small businesses are set to thrive in the years ahead. 

The new finding was published in a recent report from the Office of
Advocacy at the Small Business Administration (SBA). The report
attributes the savings to rule changes and direct agency engagement that
reduced compliance costs for small businesses nationwide. 

Trump’s deregulatory agenda has implications for consumers as well.
Biden-era regulations cost Americans an estimated $2 trillion – more
than $21,000 for the average family of four. But since Trump took
office, regulatory cuts have already saved the average family more than
$2,100. 

SBA has moved to expand on that relief through a new Deregulation Strike
Force that is conducting a government-wide review of regulations it says
have disproportionately driven up costs for job creators and consumers.
The initiative, announced in December, is led by the Office of Advocacy
and targets Biden-era rules affecting housing, health care, agriculture,
energy, and transportation, according to the agency. 

The Office of Advocacy said the regulatory relief seen during Trump’s
first year in office marks a sharp break from recent federal policy,
with annualized cost reductions more than 35 times larger than those
recorded during the Biden administration’s first year. 

Office of Advocacy staff helped change 23 federal regulations through
agency engagement and flagged more than 350 regulatory issues in formal
public comment letters submitted to regulators. The office also reviewed
hundreds of proposed and existing rules to assess their impact on small
businesses and identify opportunities to reduce compliance burdens. 

Congress created the SBA Office of Advocacy under the 1980 Regulatory
Flexibility Act, which requires federal agencies to consider how
proposed regulations affect small businesses. The office operates
independently within the executive branch and reports its findings
directly to Congress. The figures cited in the report come from the
SBA’s own regulatory analyses and internal accounting, not from outside
advocacy groups. 

SBA said the Deregulation Strike Force will serve as the operational arm
of the administration’s effort to reduce regulatory costs for small
businesses by coordinating a government-wide review of Biden-era
regulations. During his first term, President Trump famously cut 10
existing regulations for every new one, and has pledged to continue that
pace in his second term. 

According to SBA, the strike force will work across all federal
departments to identify rules that are costly, redundant, or misaligned
with statutory intent, with a focus on regulations that
disproportionately hurt small businesses. 

SBA said the review will prioritize industries where regulatory costs
most directly affect consumer prices and small-business viability,
including housing and construction, health care and medical services,
agriculture and food production, energy and utilities, and
transportation. 

SBA also said that its deregulatory effort has extended beyond
rulemaking into direct engagement with small businesses nationwide. 

According to the report, advocacy staff met with entrepreneurs and job
creators in 48 states, spending thousands of hours in direct meetings to
identify regulatory barriers affecting day-to-day operations. 

As part of that outreach, the agency launched a Red Tape Hotline to
collect complaints about burdensome regulations. The hotline received
462 submissions covering dozens of regulatory issues, the report said.
Advocacy staff used those submissions to prioritize agency engagement
and regulatory review. 

The SBA said its staff stopped mistaken environmental or compliance
reviews, removed improper import or fee requirements, and cleared up
rules that had delayed time-sensitive shipments. In several cases, those
fixes came within days. 

The SBA has also applied its deregulatory authority in emergency
settings. In January 2026, the agency began implementing an executive
order signed by President Trump directing the SBA to bypass state and
local permitting delays that have slowed wildfire recovery in
California. 

Although the SBA approved $3.2 billion in disaster loans for California
wildfire survivors, the agency said less than 25 percent of the funds
had been distributed because permitting backlogs prevented rebuilding.
The SBA said it will issue new rules allowing borrowers to self-certify
compliance when approvals face unreasonable delays, enabling faster
recovery. 

The Trump administration has also emphasized that deregulatory work does
not end with a handful of rule changes. If relief is to last, it
requires steady oversight of the federal rulemaking process, not
temporary regulatory relief that can be undone by the next
administration. 

Accordingly, the Deregulation Strike Force reflects an effort to make
deregulation ongoing and routine rather than episodic, thus preventing
sudden surges of new rules that create uncertainty for small businesses
and force owners to plan around shifting compliance requirements. 

For small businesses without political connections, lobbyists, or access
to bailouts, regulation is not an abstract policy debate. It determines
whether owners can invest and expand or remain trapped, navigating
costly, unnecessary rules that larger companies can afford to comply
with, but smaller companies cannot. 

In other words, deregulation determines whether American
entrepreneurship thrives or withers and dies on the vine. 

To seriously support small businesses, sustained deregulation must
remain a governing priority, not just a temporary political project. By
institutionalizing regulatory discipline and keeping pressure on federal
agencies, the Trump administration is giving entrepreneurs the certainty
they need to grow, hire, and compete. 

https://amac.us/newsline/economy/small-businesses-thriving-as-trump-wages
-war-on-costly-red-tape/