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Chemical Regulation

Chemical regulations may hold steady under Trump

US rules such as the Toxic Substances Control Act are hard to change

by Leigh Krietsch Boerner
January 10, 2025 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 103, Issue 1

 

Collage of people in hazmat suits carrying toxic chemicals, Donald Trump, and the US Capitol building
Credit: Madeline Monroe/C&EN; AP Photo/Andrew Harnik; Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo; Shutterstock
Donald J. Trump's deregulatory plans may not trickle down to chemical regulations in 2025.

Takeaways

Environmental deregulation may not filter down into the toxic chemical sphere.

Rules governing the Toxic Substances Control Act can only be changed by Congress.

The Donald J. Trump administration may freeze recent restrictions on chlorinated solvents.

On the campaign trail and in his first administration, Donald J. Trump showed that he’s a fan of deregulation. Days into his first presidency, Trump issued an executive order saying that for every new regulation that a federal department or agency implemented, two had to be eliminated.

In September 2024, Trump expanded this idea and said that, if elected a second time, he would require that 10 regulations be eliminated for every new one enacted. He has also spoken about rolling back environmental protections put in place during the Joe Biden administration.

But this rhetoric may not filter down as much to chemical regulation, says Lynn Bergeson, managing partner at the law firm Bergeson & Campbell. The toxic chemical sphere is more nuanced than the air and water regulation realm, she says, and the first Trump administration was not well prepared to make changes there.

“We don’t consider the toxics area particularly amenable to the type of regulatory and deregulatory initiatives that Trump I pursued,” Bergeson says.

This is partly because the law that regulates toxic chemicals, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), isn’t well understood by a lot of people in government, according to Bergeson. “It’s not as sexy, attractive, or appealing politically as climate change, even though what chemicals are brought onto the market and what chemicals are subject to restriction has a very significant impact on exposures that could give rise to climate change,” she says. “So there’s a little bit of just a natural lack of appreciation of what TSCA is and how it operates, and how integral it is to the business community.”

The rules of TSCA also make it hard for any president to deregulate. When Congress updated the law in 2016, it put guardrails on the Environmental Protection Agency that can be lifted only by Congress itself. Under TSCA, the rules that the EPA enacts to regulate chemicals can be amended only in very specific ways, including posting suggested changes publicly for comment—and the process can take years.

We don’t consider the toxics area particularly amenable to the type of regulatory and deregulatory initiatives that Trump I pursued.
Lynn Bergeson, managing partner, Bergeson & Campbell

But while Trump himself won’t have the power to undo federal chemical regulations, he can appoint agency administrators who could do it for him. According to a US environmental policy adviser speaking under condition of anonymity because they fear for their safety, new administrators could either roll back regulations or stop them from going through.

One thing the incoming Trump administration may do when it takes office Jan. 20 is follow the common practice of freezing regulations finalized by the EPA but not yet effective. For Trump this would include final rules the agency recently announced on carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethylene, and perchloroethylene.

Whatever happens with the incoming administration, Bergeson says she hopes industry will work with other stakeholders to make sure that changes in chemical regulation are reasonable and enduring. “Four years from now, we might be looking at a different administration, and the push-pull of these rapid shifts in policy ultimately need to be rationalized and sensible,” she says. “Dramatic changes in any direction are not necessarily good for any operating system.”

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