President Trump advanced his deregulation agenda Tuesday by signing legislation that canceled a rule from the Wall Street reform law that required oil and natural gas companies to disclose taxes and other payments to foreign governments.
The rollback was accomplished under the Congressional Review Act, which gives lawmakers 60 days to nix new regulations but has only has been used successfully on one previous occasion since the act was adopted in 1996.
“This is a big signing, very important signing,” Mr. Trump said at an Oval Office singing ceremony attended by Republican leaders from Capitol Hill. “This is one of many that we’ve signed and we have many more left.”
The regulation under the Dodd-Frank financial reforms was designed to impose transparency on energy companies drilling for oil or extracting coal and minerals from sometimes corrupt foreign countries. Energy companies, which have been fighting the rule in court, countered that it instead imposed costly paperwork requirements and drove up prices.
Mr. Trump, describing the deregulation push as a job-creating endeavor, said his administration was “bringing back jobs big-league.”
“We’re bringing them back at the plant level. We’re bringing them back at the mine level. The energy jobs are coming back,” he said. “You see what’s going on with the stock market — they know that we know what we’re doing so it’s going up.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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