Industrial polluters send Trump a deregulatory wish list

More than a hundred industrial trade groups and chambers of commerce are urging President-elect Donald Trump to weaken or eliminate numerous Biden administration regulations on energy, air pollution, recycling, worker heat protections, consumer safeguards and corporate financing, claiming that the rules are “strangling” the nation’s economy.

In a 21-page letter addressed to Trump and his presumptive Cabinet, the groups requested changes to dozens of “burdensome regulations that are stifling investment, making us less competitive in the world, limiting innovation and threatening the very jobs we are all working to create right here in America.”

Among other actions, the Dec. 5 letter urges Trump to resume exports of liquefied natural gas, support legislation boosting the use of nuclear energy, repeal new emission standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants, relax newly proposed standards for soot and PFAS “forever” chemicals, pause implementation of worker heat standards, limit the Food and Drug Administration’s food traceability requirements and fight efforts to impose “right-to-repair” rules, which provide consumers with tools and instructions to fix their damaged electronics instead of throwing them away.

The document has raised alarm among many environmental and consumer safety advocates, although legal experts say such changes would probably see many legal and procedural challenges.

“This is a wish list for unchecked exposure to toxic chemicals, more air pollution, dirty drinking water, contaminated food, unsafe workplaces and fewer consumer protections,” said David Michaels, a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at George Washington University. “If these corporate demands are met, we will see higher rates of cancer and heart disease in adults and asthma attacks in children, more outbreaks of food borne illnesses, workers sickened or dying from heat, and extreme weather events that will bring tremendous loss of life and property.”

Ken Alex, director at the Center for Law, Energy and Environment at UC Berkeley, said the letter closely mirrors the spirit and text of Project 2025, especially the 900-page document’s pro-fossil fuel agenda.

The signatory trade groups include powerful industry associations such as the American Chemistry Council and the American Forest and Paper Assn., as well as smaller ones such as the Pool and Hot Tub Alliance and National Lime Assn.

“We look forward to working with the Trump administration and the new Congress to drive pro-growth, science-based policies that support growing domestic chemical production right here at home and help make America the world’s manufacturing superpower,” said Scott Openshaw, senior director of advocacy communications for the American Chemistry Council.

Notably, none of the large automotive groups are included as signatories — although there is representation by the Motorcycle Industry Council, the RV Industry Assn. and the Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Assn.

“That’s super interesting because they have a whole bunch of proposals to preclude limitations to internal combustion engines and a lot of things about cable pipe emissions,” said Alex, suggesting those must instead be from the oil companies. And automakers “at least as I understand it are interested in moving to electric vehicles, because that’s where they’re seeing the industry heading. So the absence of the automakers here is pretty significant, in my view.”

In addition, as researchers and policy experts had anticipated soon after the election, the groups requested that the new Trump administration keep President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in place.

While manufacturers initially opposed the tax and price control provisions of the law, they wrote, “the energy tax incentives in the law have spurred investments in new technologies that will power manufacturing growth for decades…. A wholesale repeal of the credits will have a disastrous implication for these investments and the jobs that come with them.”

Alex said that as brazen as the letter is in terms of its depth and breadth of deregulatory “asks,” it is “fair in many contexts to recognize that some regulations and permitting requirements are onerous and difficult. There needs to be some sensitivity to that, and just because it comes from the American Chemistry Council doesn’t mean that there’s not some validity to some of those claims.”

However, he said, the letter really “underscores the importance and need for rigorous agency evaluation for having staff that have expertise and scientific background…. I fear that some of these proposals are going to be considered high priority to be implemented without full consideration.”

Should the incoming Trump administration choose to pursue some or all of the requests, success is not guaranteed.

“The incoming president cannot do most of this by executive action. Some of it maybe yes, but most of it is regulatory action,” said Deborah Sivas, a law professor and director of Stanford’s Environmental Law Clinic. “In order to do a new rule or undo an old rule, you still have to go through the rulemaking process. I suspect they’re going to try to truncate that in some way.”

When the EPA or another federal agency goes through a rulemaking process, officials must follow the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, which include the lengthy process of soliciting and reviewing public comments on draft proposals.

At the same time, government lawyers will be charged with preparing arguments to justify why deregulation makes sense, to defend these decisions in court as they have during previous Republican administrations, Sivas said.

Those in the Trump administration will face the reality that if they try to push through review processes too quickly, they could end up losing when their actions are challenged in court, Sivas said.

“The rules aren’t going to change on a dime. It’ll take awhile. And there will be litigation,” Sivas said.

Steve Fleischli, senior director for air and water at the Natural Resources Defense Council, agreed. Even with new appointees installed at the EPA, they still will need to comply with basic administrative procedure laws and legal precedents.

“They have to abide by what Congress has directed them to do in the underlying statutes, which, in most cases, is to protect public health and the environment. And so they need to take action that’s rooted in law and science. They can’t just willy-nilly adopt new regulations or roll back existing regulations,” Fleischli said.

Existing law will be a big barrier, he said. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, for example, set specific requirements, and he said the NRDC and other groups are ready to go to court to protect the country’s bedrock environmental laws.

“They’ll have to contend with the courts. And the environmental community stands ready to fight these kinds of rollbacks if and when they come,” Fleischli said. “We’ll be there to make sure that any rollbacks are approached lawfully.”

During Trump’s first term, NRDC brought 163 cases against the administration, Fleischli said. According to the environmental group, it won nearly 90% of the cases that were resolved.

Fleischli, a senior attorney for the organization, said during Trump’s term, his administration sought to assault fundamental environmental protections but in the end wasn’t very successful.

“Last time, they came in and they just threw everything at the wall hoping something would stick, but they did it without any sort of appreciation or understanding of the legal constraints,” Fleischli said. “I think they’ve learned a lot of lessons from the last time. So they probably aren’t going to be as haphazard as they were last time.”

If those in the manufacturing industry were to succeed in achieving some of their requests, the consequences would be dire, Fleischli said.

For example, industries are urging Trump to reconsider and relax the Biden administration’s new rule for fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5, or soot. The EPA has said the public health benefits of the strengthened standards include avoiding up to 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 asthma cases in 2032 and annually thereafter as the rule is implemented.

“These are really critical safeguards for public health, and undoing those would just have enormous implications for premature death and asthma and lost work days, sickness,” Fleischli said. “That’s just one rule that they want to roll back.”

On PFAS chemicals — an issue the manufacturers highlighted, asking Trump to pause any new rulemaking on the chemical — Sivas said she expects the new administration might try to weaken regulations “under the radar a little bit” because the issue has generated significant public concern.

PFAS, or Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are notoriously hard to destroy. They build up in the body and don’t break down in the environment.

“I think probably the environmental groups will try to highlight that,” Sivas said. “Because people don’t like that. They don’t like to think that they’re drinking PFAS.”

Sivas said she will be interested to see how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might affect environmental health protections if he is confirmed to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. His nomination has caused alarm among public health experts given his views against vaccines and his calls for removing fluoride from drinking water, but he also has advocated for addressing toxic contaminants in food and water — an area of concern shared by environmental advocates.

On clean water protections, the manufacturers urged Trump to ensure that the EPA’s regulatory decision-making complies with a landmark 2023 Supreme Court decision scaling back federal protections for many wetlands and streams. Disputes over the so-called Waters of the United States rule have been long argued in the courts and have brought whipsawing shifts with changes of administrations in recent years.

Sivas said she expects the Trump administration may do as requested to limit protections for wetlands, which the construction industry has also been seeking. The Supreme Court’s decision has drawn criticism from scientists and environmental advocates, who say the gutting of safeguards will jeopardize water quality throughout the arid West.

Fleischli said tens of millions of acres of wetlands are at risk because of the Supreme Court decision.

“EPA has already taken action to address that ruling from the Supreme Court, and now industry wants even more,” Fleischli said. “It just demonstrates a complete indifference to the importance of the environment. It’s a wholesale assault on our wetlands and our waterways.”