The economy is booming at twice the Obama-era levels because of the administration’s push to slash regulations, promote pro-growth policies and cut taxes, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“I really appreciate the major effort by government, and when I say government it was the White House, but yes the Congress and the Senate, doing some regulatory fixing,” said Chamber President Thomas Donohue.
Trump arrived promising to eliminate one regulation for every new one, but has actually cut some 16 regulations for each new one.
Donohue, at a Christian Science Monitor media breakfast this week, said that prior administrations had piled on so many regulations that the business community looked like the leaning tower of Pisa.
“Everytime we had a new regulation we never took away the old one and that put lots of conflict in what people were facing,” he said. “There is no big mystery to progress, the results of the federal government getting off the backs business in a way that everybody understood was going to have to happen.”
Overall, he said that the economy is humming. “There are a lot of positive stories to tell in our current economic environment. Ten years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, our economy is finally firing on most all of its cylinders,” said Donohue.
He noted the recent quarterly growth above 4 percent and said that is a “100 percent increase from the 2 percent that we sort of had as a cap for almost 10 years.”
And, he said, “it’s the result of the addition of pro-growth policies, tax reform, and regulatory relief that got the economy going.”
He did note warning signs, including a lack of workers and “dangerous” trade policies.
[Related: Corporate America gets caught between vibrant economy and Trump’s trade war]
