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Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, President Trump faces a tough headwind: 18 of 20 midterms since World War II have swung against the sitting president. To buck this historical trend, he must drive the economy into high gear, fast.
Regulation costs more than taxes, not just in dollars but in lost ambition. There is a better way to run an economy — and our country perfected it before we lost our way. Those who would like to make America great again should focus on what made the American economy the strongest in the world: Common law governance, where governments punish bad actors but leave everyone else alone. Freedom really does put people to work.
We’ve spent a century ratcheting toward the civil law culture of permission-first governance — where entrepreneurs must beg bureaucrats to act. This chokes investment. The average federal permit takes years to acquire due to lengthy and burdensome regulatory requirements, delaying projects like semiconductor plants, data centers, or nuclear reactors that could employ thousands just to build them.
In contrast, the common law tradition, rooted in clear standards and enforcement, frees citizens to innovate. This approach powered America’s economic rise, with a decentralized network of county courthouses extending and administering property rights — identity, title, and exchange — into a rule of law that accumulated capital and let it work. New businesses are the lifeblood of the economy (and create the upward pressure on wages). Nearly half of men returning from WWII started a business. But does anyone think it would be possible with all the rules we have now? The federal code of regulations contains more than a million discrete commands.
Trump’s recent Executive Order to restore common sense to federal procurement, which instructs regulators to pull out 10 regulations for every one going in, is exactly the solution our economy needs to aggressively cut regulations and deliver on that promise. But the problem is too big to finish quickly, so where to start? The answer should be determined by those actually willing to put skin in the game — entrepreneurs, investors, operators.
Enter the US Investment Accelerator. Established by another recent Executive Order, the US Investment Accelerator is a kind of “one-stop shop” at the Department of Commerce to reach across agencies to help projects of more than $1 Billion break ground faster. Because every groundbreaking requires a project to pass multiple regulatory gates spread across different federal agencies, it is wise to create a path for avoiding the unnecessary delays endemic to bureaucracy.
Together, these EOs demonstrate that President Trump understands what ails the American economy, and the medicine it needs to revive its original spirit. That revival should use new tools like transparency technology, surety bonds, and Permit by Rule (PBR) to restore the common law preference for enforcement of clear standards rather than requiring bureaucratic permission through regulatory review. These tools could allow projects to move forward in weeks, rather than the years a rule takes from proposal to finality.
Transparency tech, like real-time monitoring and blockchain for indelible recording, ensures compliance without bureaucracy. Surety bonds protect taxpayers, letting businesses bear risks while moving fast (and allowing slow bureaucratic analysis to be transferred to the private sector for better risk management and less delay). These could be combined with a Permit By Rule approach, frontloading analysis and expediting enforcement when mistakes are made. Reliance on these tools isn’t about cutting corners; it’s about focusing government on enforcing standards, not delaying progress. The unseen cost of waiting — lost jobs, stalled wages — far outweighs the cost of compliance. This is no mere tweak; it’s a return toward what made America great. Trump’s vision can spark a renaissance of growth. By 2026, voters could see rising wages as new factories, homes, and energy projects break ground. Let’s turbocharge this golden age with tools that empower citizens, not bureaucrats.
Stephen Hollingshead is a former regulator under former President George W. Bush, CEO of the regulatory technology startup ChangeInEx, and a Senior Fellow at America First Policy Institute, where he writes on regulatory reform and expeditionary economics.
