Few Americans care about beryllium. Most have probably neverheard of it.

But, it turns out, the metal — symbol Be on the periodictable — offers a case study on governing by President Donald Trump.With little fanfare earlier this year, the Department of Labordelayed and the White House began a review of limits on workplaceexposure to the possibly toxic element used in cell phones andaircraft, handing industry a victory.

Across Washington, myriad rules are similarly being softened,mostly to the delight of corporate America. With executive orders,bureaucratic actions and unprecedented use of an obscure statute,the Trump administration has killed or postponed dozens ofregulations. The controversies swamping the White House haven'tgotten in the way of an often under-the-radar, piece-by-piecerealization of Trump's pro-business campaign promises.

Some moves, such as relaxing Obama-era clean-water decrees, havemade headlines. Many others, the beryllium deferment among them,have received scant attention outside a tight circle of agencies,businesses and often outraged public-interest groups.

They may seem minor, but they all add up. “He wants to free upas much of the economy from government regulations as possible andhe's found ways to do that outside the legislative process,” saidJulian Zelizer, a professor and presidential historian at PrincetonUniversity.

Chief executives may not see a clear path to the corporate taxcut they want, but they're winning in a significant smattering ofother ways. E-cigarette makers got a reprieve when Trump's Food andDrug Administration pushed out the deadline for complyingwith tobacco laws. The Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration gave builders three extra months to slash laborers'exposure to silica dust, which has been linked to cancer.

Companies bidding for big federal contracts don't have todisclose serious safety and labor-law violations anymore.Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt thwarted a pushmade under President Barack Obama to ban Dow Chemical Co.'s widelyused pesticide Lorsban from food farming. The Department ofAgriculture has twice delayed new standards for livestock labeledorganic, which would require animals to have year-around access tothe outdoors and enough indoor space to stretch their limbs.

“They are just getting started,” said Todd Becker, chiefexecutive officer of ethanol-maker Green Plains Inc. Congress maybe going slowly with the sweeping measures on the Trump agenda, but“at the agency level, that stuff is going to keep moving. You don'tneed legislation.”

All the moves on the regulatory front helps explain why, evenwith the swirl of distractions at the White House, investors arebullish. Sam Zell, the billionaire real-estatebaron, said many of the actions, such as rolling back waterwayrules, will have zero impact on his companies but sent a crucialmessage. Trump “has brought back the importance of business. It'swhy the stock market is up and why I'm optimistic.”

There's more to come in what Trump strategist Steve Bannon hascalled the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Thepresident on Jan. 30 issued an order directing agencies to createtask forces to find unnecessary regulations to eliminate — atleast two for every one proposed or handed down. That effort isunderway, with input from industry, local government and consumers.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission calls its program KISS,for Keep It Simple Stupid.

A bill that passed the House in January would change the gameentirely, adding layers of new hurdles for agencies that write therules that implement laws. The Regulatory Accountability Actwould, for one thing, emphasize the costs to businesses ofcomplying with rules, something the Trump team contends theirpredecessors failed to do to the point of irresponsibility. Themeasure is now in the Senate, where it probably wouldn't survive afilibuster, should Democrats decide to go that route.

The president and the Republican-controlled Congress have shownthat rollbacks aren't so difficult. They used the CongressionalReview Act to throw out or suspend 14 pieces of Obama'slegacy — stopping regulations for workplace safetyrecord-keeping, for example, and killing an anti-corruptiondirective that forced oil, gas and mining companies to disclosepayments to foreign governments.

Before Trump, only one president had signed a review-act measuresince the statute became law in 1996: George W. Bush tapped it tooverturn a rule under predecessor Bill Clinton mandating thecreation of workplace ergonomic programs. The act, which setsexpedited procedures to review a regulation, has to be used beforea certain deadline in a new presidency, which for Trump passed thismonth.

There's been pushback from a chorus of critics to thederegulation machine. They see the government's role as protectorof consumers, workers and the environment being crushed. A federallawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Trump'seliminate-regulations order on grounds that it is, among otherthings, arbitrary and capricious.

But the executive branch has broad power when it comes towriting the rules of everyday government policy, and the Trump teamis leveraging it.

“The administration is using every tool at its disposal toaccomplish its goals,” especially with the thin Republicanmajority in the Senate, said Sam Geduldig, a partner at lobbyingfirm CGCN Group in Washington, whose clients include Boeing Co.,Walt Disney Co. and Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg News. “It'sthe spaghetti against the wall approach: Try it all.”

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