President Trump’s bold agenda to rebalance global trade through tariffs and slash government spending demands swift action to offset short-term economic disruptions.
The president secured trillions in promised investment. But when will those projects ever break ground? Federal permitting, a bureaucratic morass, delays critical infrastructure and energy projects, stifling growth.
The unseen costs of these delays — lost jobs, forgone wages and idle capital that could otherwise fuel innovation and upward mobility — are the tangible consequences. What is not built today diminishes prosperity tomorrow.
President Trump’s recent executive orders on deregulation and investment acceleration prioritize growth, yet permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act remains a bottleneck. A 2020 Council on Environmental Quality study found that reviews under the law average 4.5 years, costing billions in lost opportunities.
To get President Trump’s projects started sooner, he should consider utilizing streamlined regulatory tools to reform permitting through voluntary pilot programs using regulatory technology (RegTech) and a permit-by-rule structure backed by surety bonds. These tools would allow the government to frontload the analysis, correct compliance errors much more quickly, and protect the taxpayer with private insurance — and best of all, it simplifies the permitting process and reduces years of government bureaucracy.
This return to common law principles, where the government focuses on enforcing clear standards rather than granting individual permissions, breathes life into property rights, empowering citizens to act freely within defined limits. That’s the decentralized common law governance that historically unleashed American economic dynamism. It would make America’s economy great again, indeed.
However, changing regulations takes time. Notice and comment rulemaking is a quagmire that allows loud factions to defer electoral reality. But there is a lawful way around this delay.
The Administrative Procedure Act allows agencies to forgo notice and comment for policy statements or procedural rules for “good cause,” providing legal flexibility for pilot programs. Based on this, a 1993 DC Circuit case ruled that voluntary pilots do not require notice and comment because they do not impose new obligations on everyone — yet they will ultimately improve the process for everyone (which eventually requires notice and comment or congressional action).
This precedent has stood for over 30 years. The EPA’s Project XL, launched in 1995, proves the legality and efficacy of voluntary pilot programs without notice and comment. Project XL tested innovative permitting approaches, such as streamlined environmental approvals, under Administrative Procedure Act exemptions for policy statements. Fifty pilots were implemented at EPA, and 20 percent of them eventually led to permanent regulatory changes through notice and comment, demonstrating that temporary, voluntary experiments can lawfully test reforms while paving the way for broader adoption.
This precedent also supports using pilot programs to test a permit-by-rule system, where permits are automatically granted unless denied based on transparent standards, a model already sometimes used by the EPA and at least 38 states. For instance, Texas’s permit-by-rule system takes most of the time out of permitting, allowing projects to get started creating jobs and securing supply chains — the kind of decentralized efficiency that built America’s economic preeminence.
A permit-by-rule system, tested through voluntary pilots, also aligns with President Trump’s deregulatory vision. Participants have the option of voluntarily opting in, testing streamlined processes without imposing new legal obligations on other participants, qualifying as Administrative Procedure Act-exempt policy statements or interpretive rules. RegTech — using sensors, blockchains and AI — enhances this approach.
A “courthouse in the cloud” can verify compliance in real time, cutting review times from years to milliseconds. And blockchain-based records can ensure environmental standards are being met, making permitting faster and more transparent and enforcement much swifter. This digital extension of property rights administration combines American economic tradition with cutting edge technology.
Surety bonds complete the framework. By requiring applicants to post bonds guaranteeing compliance, the government shifts from gatekeeping to enforcement. If standards are violated, bonds cover remediation, protecting the public without delaying approvals. Project XL provides lawful precedent for this kind of process improvement, with pilots refining systems before broader rulemaking applies the best ones across the board.
There are some that argue this accelerated process comes at the expense of environmental standards. In fact, the opposite is true. This gambit would better protect the environment and the taxpayer by creating a faster, more cost-effective way to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act’s environmental analysis process requirements. By launching voluntary pilots now, President Trump can deliver economic wins before the midterms, showing voters that deregulation drives jobs and infrastructure renewal.
Project XL’s legacy proves that voluntary pilots are a lawful, effective way to test permitting reforms. By combining RegTech, permit-by-rule and surety bonds, we can unlock those trillions in promised investment. Get ready for the ribbon cuttings.
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.
