Many governments talk about cutting regulation but few manage to
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. He brandished a chainsaw at campaign rallies, to signify his eagerness to clear-cut the thickets of bureaucracy and regulation impeding the economy’s progress. Perhaps more strikingly, he has actually lived up to this act.
In November Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, told The Economist he had already taken 800 steps to reduce red tape and planned 3,200 more such “structural reforms". He is not alone. Politicians around the world, on both the right and the left, are embracing deregulation.
Donald Trump has created a “Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, to shrink government and slash red tape. He has also initiated a maelstrom in the civil service. Last year New Zealand set up a “ministry for regulation", to which citizens can report any “red-tape issue".
On January 29th the European Commission pledged to cut corporate reporting requirements by 25%, and by 35% for small firms. Even countries renowned for their powerful states are joining in. François Bayrou, France’s prime minister, promises “a strong movement of de-bureaucratisation".
Vietnam plans to abolish a quarter of government agencies. India’s bureaucracy, a byword for Dickensian obstruction, is slimming down. The push to reform how Western governments operate “is potentially bigger than the Reagan-Thatcher revolution" of the 1980s, argues John Cochrane of Stanford University.
The world is not short of red tape to cut. According to the Regulatory Studies Centre at George Washington University, federal regulations in America now exceed 180,000 pages, up from 20,000 in the early 1960s. Official figures suggest that the federal government imposes 12bn hours of paperwork on
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