Trump Executive Orders Signal Potential Changes in Environmental Policy Impacting Agriculture

As discussed below, we are seeing some signs of potential impacts on the regulatory processes of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies overseeing agriculture that could foreshadow important changes for the agricultural community.

EPA Pauses Actions Related to Pesticide Use While Pressure from Outside Groups Mounts

On January 20, President Trump issued the Executive Order (EO) titled Regulatory Freeze Pending Review. The EO directs all agencies not to propose or issue any rule until an agency official appointed by the president reviews and approves the rule. The EO applies broadly not only to agency “rules” but also to any substantive agency actions likely to lead to new rules, including notices of inquiry, advance notices of proposed rulemaking, and notices of proposed rulemaking. While this EO would not appear to apply to licensing actions, such as registration of new chemical and biological pesticides or new uses of existing products, food-use pesticides do require a food safety tolerance issued through notice and comment rulemaking. The EO further directs agencies to consider postponing for 60 days or more the effective date of proposed rules in order to “review any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise.”

Consistent with this directive, EPA appears to be delaying some actions while the new Administration evaluates priorities related to pesticide use. EPA recently extended comment periods for proposed EPA actions on several crop protection tools. This includes a mitigation proposal for the herbicide atrazine (90 Fed. Reg. 8798, Feb. 3, 2025), and a proposed rule to limit certain food uses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos. EPA also recently extended the comment period on a petition by 11 state Attorneys General asking EPA to initiate rulemaking to clarify the preemptive scope of pesticide labeling requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

Meanwhile, outside groups have intensified pressure on the Administration to take action to restrict pesticide use, seizing on recent public statements and actions by the Administration seemingly linking pesticide exposure to certain health outcomes. This includes a February 13 EO in which President Trump established a “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission tasked with, among other things, assessing the threat of “certain chemicals” to children’s health. Nongovernmental organizations have already petitioned the Administration and MAHA Commission to implement a new enforcement framework for pesticide tolerances (approved limits on pesticide residues in or on food) and to ban a number of widely used pesticides. EPA’s new administrator, Lee Zeldin, has vowed to defer to agency scientists on pesticide safety issues.

Potential Changes to Federal Agencies’ Approval Processes and Assessment Methodologies

Another EO issued on January 20, titled Unleashing American Energy, directs EPA, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other agencies in Section 5 to “undertake all available efforts to eliminate all delays within their respective permitting processes, including through, but not limited to, the use of general permitting and permit by rule.” It is unclear whether the Administration’s focus on expediting regulatory approvals will extend to EPA’s review and approval of new pesticide use registrations, which are already backlogged under existing statutory deadlines, or to USDA’s oversight over the movement or release of certain plants and microorganisms. Efforts to streamline product approvals could be further impeded by funding and staffing reductions being implemented under the new Administration, and a possible shift in the regulatory approach to pesticides, as discussed above.

To complement a streamlined permitting process, Section 5 also addresses implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is a procedural statute that requires federal agencies to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of major decisions and provides the public with information about the environmental impacts of potential agency actions. By way of example, many regulatory decisions from federal agencies impacting agriculture have required environmental reviews under NEPA. For instance, certain approvals by USDA for movement or release of genetically engineered plants and microorganisms have been precipitated by NEPA reviews.[1] NEPA reviews and their underlying federal actions have often been challenged in federal court. Pursuant to an EO issued by President Jimmy Carter, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) promulgated NEPA-implementing regulations that set forth standards for how federal agencies are to consider the environmental impacts of their actions. These regulations have been in place for decades, but CEQ’s authority to issue binding NEPA regulations has recently been under scrutiny (for more, see here). Section 5 of the “Unleashing American Energy” EO directs the chairman of CEQ to propose rescinding CEQ’s NEPA regulations and seeks revision of NEPA-implementing regulations issued by individual federal agencies. Pursuant to this directive, CEQ has since issued an interim final rule that removes CEQ’s NEPA-implementing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations. See Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations, 90 Fed. Reg. 10,610 (Feb. 25, 2025). We anticipate that we may also see further revisions to the NEPA-implementing regulations promulgated by federal agencies.

Section 6 of this same EO, titled “Prioritizing Accuracy in Environmental Analyses,” requires agencies to adhere only to “relevant legislated requirements for environmental considerations” and to eliminate any considerations beyond those requirements. It also requires agencies to “strictly use the most robust methodologies of assessment at their disposal” and prohibits agencies from using methodologies that are “arbitrary or ideologically motivated.” How this directive will be implemented by EPA also remains to be seen, but we expect a Trump EPA to hew closely to the specific factors enumerated in FIFRA and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in assessing pesticide safety (and exclude perceived environmental justice considerations or climate-focused considerations that appear to go beyond FIFRA’s registration mandate). We also anticipate a renewed push for transparency in scientific data relied upon in agency decision-making, similar to a rule promulgated under the prior Trump Administration that was ultimately struck down on procedural grounds in court.

Potential Impact of EOs on National Energy Emergency on EPA’s Actions Under the ESA

Another EO issued on January 20, Declaring a National Energy Emergency, requires agencies to use, to the maximum extent permitted by law, Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations allowing for informal, expedited inter-agency consultation in emergencies in order “to facilitate the Nation’s energy supply.” Heads of all agencies are required, within 30 days of the order, to identify “planned or potential actions” that may be subject to the emergency consultation process. It remains to be seen whether pesticide registration applicants will look to this provision for relief from EPA’s potentially lengthy ESA consultation process. It is similarly unclear at this point how the EOs will impact EPA’s recent Herbicide Strategy and Draft Insecticide Strategy, frameworks designed to address EPA’s ESA obligations before pesticides are registered under FIFRA.

[1] Regulatory decisions by EPA pursuant to FIFRA typically do not require analysis under NEPA under the doctrine of functional equivalence.