Trump’s promise to eliminate “all Biden regulations” in his first 100 days was not realistic from the outset. The federal rulemaking process, governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), requires a minimum 30-day waiting period before rules can take effect, plus 30-60 day comment periods—sometimes stretching to 180 days for complex regulations. Agencies cannot simply delete rules overnight. Instead, they must formally propose repeals, allow public comment, and issue final decisions that are legally defensible in court. Even with aggressive executive action and Congressional Review Act procedures, removing decades of accumulated regulations takes years, not months. Since taking office on January 20, 2025, Trump has signed 254 executive orders, 59 memoranda, and 136 proclamations by April 2, 2026—many aimed at deregulation.
His administration did achieve measurable results: only 2,441 final rules were issued in 2025, the lowest count since the mid-1970s, with 646 deregulatory actions finalized versus just 5 significant new regulations. Despite these numbers, the administration has actually fallen behind on its own timeline. The EPA’s 2025 agenda projected finalizing major climate rule repeals by year-end, but those deadlines have slipped into 2026 and beyond—a concrete example of how rulemaking reality diverges from campaign promises. The 100-day benchmark, borrowed from FDR’s famous first 100 days of the New Deal, has become shorthand for rapid executive action. But FDR signed legislation Congress passed. Trump’s deregulatory agenda must navigate a different landscape: existing regulations are locked into place by statute, procedural safeguards, and judicial review. Understanding how the rulemaking process actually works explains why even an administration fully committed to deregulation cannot erase decades of rules in a single quarter.
Table of Contents
- What Does Trump’s “Remove All Biden Regulations” Claim Actually Mean?
- How Federal Rulemaking Timelines Actually Work
- How Congressional Review Act Rescissions Speed Up Repeal
- What “Remove All Biden Regulations” Would Actually Require
- Why the Trump Administration is Already Behind Schedule
- What Counts as a “Biden Regulation” and What Doesn’t
- What Happens Next and What Stays in Place
- Conclusion
What Does Trump’s “Remove All Biden Regulations” Claim Actually Mean?
trump‘s deregulatory promise encompasses regulations issued or finalized during the Biden administration (January 2021 to January 2025). Biden’s agencies released thousands of new rules, from environmental standards to labor protections and financial regulations. However, “all Biden regulations” is not a precise legal category. Some Biden-era rules were mandated by statute and cannot be removed without Congressional action. Others were issued under executive branch discretion and can be repealed through the same rulemaking process. Trump issued an The Administrative Procedure Act sets minimum timelines that cannot be bypassed. When an agency proposes a new rule or proposes to repeal an existing rule, it must: publish notice of the proposed rule in the Federal Register, allow the public 30 to 60 days (sometimes 180 days for complex rules) to submit written comments, consider those comments, and then issue a final decision explaining why it accepted or rejected public input. Only after this process can a rule take effect, and even then, agencies must include a 30-day waiting period before the rule becomes operative. In practice, agencies often add additional time for stakeholder meetings, interagency review, and legal vetting. This entire process, from proposal to implementation, typically takes one to three years for routine rules. Complex rules take far longer. OSHA, for example, takes an average of 10 years to develop and promulgate a health or safety standard—not because of bureaucratic foot-dragging, but because proving that a regulation will be protective and technically feasible requires extensive scientific research, cost-benefit analysis, and engineering studies. When OSHA proposed its beryllium exposure standard in the 1990s, it took roughly a decade from initial study to final rule, even with agency resources dedicated to the issue. Environmental rules are similarly lengthy. The EPA’s process for updating National Ambient Air Quality Standards can consume 5-10 years. These timelines exist because regulations affect millions of workers, businesses, and consumers; rushing the process creates legal vulnerabilities and poor outcomes. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) offers a faster path for rule rescission, but not fast enough for a 100-day timetable. Under the CRA, Congress has 60 legislative session days (not calendar days, and not counting days when Congress adjourns for more than 3 consecutive days) to disapprove a rule via joint resolution using expedited “fast track” procedures. If Congress passes the resolution and the President signs it, the rule is voided and agencies are barred from issuing substantially similar rules without explicit Congressional authorization. Trump’s Republican-controlled Congress used the CRA extensively in 2025, passing multiple resolutions dismantling Biden-era rules on the environment, labor, and consumer finance. However, CRA rescissions only work for recently finalized rules. Once a rule has been in place for 60 days and Congress fails to act, the CRA avenue closes permanently for that rule. Trump cannot use the CRA to eliminate Biden rules from January 2021 that are now years old; Congress missed those 60-day windows. Instead, removing older regulations requires the full Administrative Procedure Act process, with notice, comment, and final agency decision—the same timeline that created the original rule in the first place. This explains why the administration’s most aggressive early moves targeted newly finalized Biden rules still within the CRA window, while older regulations remain harder to touch. A literal removal of all Biden-era regulations would demand an unprecedented rewriting of federal code, costing tens of millions of dollars and consuming thousands of pages in the Federal Register. No administration has achieved complete rollback of a predecessor’s rules, and doing so would destabilize entire industries dependent on regulatory certainty. Banks, utilities, hospitals, and manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in compliance infrastructure—data systems, safety upgrades, supply chains, and employee training—based on Biden-era rules. Sudden elimination of those rules would create chaos, legal disputes over vested rights, and potential disruption to essential services. Instead of literal elimination, the Trump administration has pursued selective repeal, targeting rules deemed most economically burdensome or ideologically problematic. This approach is more realistic but slower. Environmental rules, labor standards, and antitrust enforcement actions have been prioritized for repeal or reinterpretation. Other rules—like food safety standards or medications approval processes—have been left intact because their repeal would face public opposition or Congressional resistance. The 100-day claim implied action would be swift and comprehensive; the reality is a grinding, multi-year effort to reshape regulatory governance one rule at a time. By the administration’s own projections, major climate rule repeals should have been final by the end of 2025. But these deadlines have slipped into 2026 and beyond, illustrating how rulemaking timelines constrain even the most committed deregulatory efforts. The EPA’s proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan Rule, the Methane emissions standard, and the Tailpipe emissions standards—all centerpiece Biden environmental regulations—remain in various stages of notice-and-comment. These rules alone have generated tens of thousands of public comments, requiring months of agency staff time to review and address. The agencies are working as quickly as permissible, but the APA’s procedural requirements cannot be circumvented. Legal challenges present another delay factor. Environmental groups, labor unions, consumer advocates, and state attorneys general have sued or plan to sue agency repeals, arguing they violate the APA, fail to follow proper procedure, or exceed agency authority. Courts have stayed (temporarily halted) several Trump administration repeals pending judicial review. This litigation uncertainty freezes timelines. An agency cannot finalize a rule repeal if a court has barred it, and agencies must also invest legal resources defending their repeals in court rather than moving to the next repeal. The administration’s aggressive deregulatory push has created a bottleneck: there are only so many lawyers and rulemaking staff, and they cannot process every repeal simultaneously. Not every action taken by Biden’s administration counts as a regulation. Guidance documents, memoranda, enforcement priorities, and policy announcements can be quickly reversed with new guidance or policy shifts. Trump rescinded Biden’s enforcement priorities in labor law, immigration, and antitrust within days or weeks of taking office. These reversals did not require the APA process because they are not final rules. However, formally promulgated rules—those that went through notice-and-comment and were published in the Federal Register as final regulations—cannot be reversed so quickly. This distinction explains why Trump’s earliest deregulatory actions seemed dramatic: many were reversals of guidance and enforcement priorities that could be undone by memo or executive order. The harder work—formally repealing the rules themselves—has stretched across the entire first year and into the second. For example, Biden’s Department of Labor issued guidance making it easier to classify workers as employees rather than independent contractors. Trump reversed that guidance immediately, but repealing the formal rule (if one exists) requires the full rulemaking process. This is why press reports of “Trump eliminates Biden rule X” sometimes refer to guidance rescissions rather than formal rule repeals, creating an impression of faster action than the underlying facts support. Looking forward, Trump’s deregulatory agenda will continue through his term, but at a pace constrained by the rulemaking process. The administration has prioritized environmental, labor, and financial regulations for repeal or reinterpretation. However, some Biden-era rules are unlikely to be removed because they rest on Congressional statute or face strong political constituencies. Rules mandating safety standards, drug approvals, and financial institution solvency are rarely targeted, because their repeal would invite immediate Congressional override or public backlash. Rules on environmental protection, workplace standards, and consumer privacy are more likely candidates for Trump repeal efforts because they can be framed as “job-killing” or “unnecessary.” The gap between the 100-day promise and the multi-year reality reflects a broader truth about American governance: no president, regardless of party, can fundamentally restructure the regulatory state in weeks. The administrative state’s rules, once published and in force, acquire legal weight that survives changes in political leadership. Businesses, workers, and consumers develop expectations and investments around those rules. Unraveling them is possible but slow, contested, and never as complete as campaign rhetoric suggests. Trump’s 2025 rulemaking record—2,441 final rules issued, the lowest since the 1970s, with 646 deregulatory actions—shows genuine action. But it also shows that even aggressive deregulation is constrained by law, procedure, and the sheer administrative burden of unwinding thousands of rules. Trump’s claim to remove “all Biden regulations” in 100 days was never feasible under federal law. The Administrative Procedure Act requires notice, public comment, agency deliberation, and a 30-day waiting period before rules take effect. Complex regulations take years to develop and repeal. The Congressional Review Act offers a faster path for recently finalized rules, but only for those still within the 60-session-day window. Rules that are older, mandated by statute, or dependent on complex scientific or economic analysis cannot be repealed quickly, no matter how committed an administration is to deregulation. What has occurred instead is a significant but selective deregulatory push. Trump’s administration rescinded or proposed to repeal many Biden-era rules, slashing 2025 final rulemaking to its lowest level in five decades. However, the agency remains behind schedule on major repeals like climate rules, and litigation threatens further delays. Consumers and businesses should understand that regulation is sticky: rules become entrenched in infrastructure, expectations, and law. Changes to the regulatory landscape happen, but not in 100 days. The realistic timeline for substantial regulatory reform is years, not months—a reality that constrains all presidents regardless of their deregulatory ambitions.
How Federal Rulemaking Timelines Actually Work
How Congressional Review Act Rescissions Speed Up Repeal
What “Remove All Biden Regulations” Would Actually Require
Why the Trump Administration is Already Behind Schedule
What Counts as a “Biden Regulation” and What Doesn’t
What Happens Next and What Stays in Place
Conclusion
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