President Donald Trump has released a sweeping 2-year exemption from new federal pollutants guidelines for many chemical production facilities within the US citing national security and economic resilience worries.
In a July 17 proclamation, President Trump postponed compliance with portions of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2024 “HON Rule” – a regulation that charged stricter air emission standards on centers that produces synthetic organic chemicals, polymers, and resins. The rule was supposed to decease the dangerous air pollutants below the Clean Air Act.
The administration explained that the rule’s requirements are overly burden a few and technologically unlikely within the latest time-frame.
“The technology to enforce the HON Rule isn’t available,” the proclamation states. “Such technology does not exist in a commercially possible form enough to permit implementation…. by the compliance dates.”
The 2-year exemption applies to corporations together with Dow, BASF, Shell, Formosa Plastics, DuPont, Phillips 66, and others working plants in Louisiana, Texas, Michigan, Alabama, and several other United States. In general, the exemption impacts 25 corporations and over 40 individual centers.
The order says the delayed rules are needed to avoid disruptions in chemical supply chains that aid national defence, energy, health-care, and agriculture. The proclamation warns that implementing the rule on schedule may lead to “shutdowns or huge capital investments” before established technology is available, weakening the country’s industrial base.
Under the exemption, each indexed facility can continue operating below the older, much less stringent standards that existed before the HON Rule was finalized in May 2024. The reprieve will expire 2 years after every facility’s original compliance deadline, although the administration did not imply whether also extensions may want to follow. This executive action is the recent example of the Trump administration’s broader effort to decrease federal regulatory burdens on US industry, particularly in sectors the President considers important to economic development.
