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.

Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.