INFORM April 2025

REGULATORY REVIEW

28 • inform April 2025, Vol. 36 (4)

Removing regulations

Regulatory Review is a regular column featuring updates on regulatory matters concerning oils- and fats-related industries.

said Musk has “committed to recusing himself” from potential conflicts related to his work on DOGE. An opinion piece published in November in The Wall Street Journal authored by Musk and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, argued the Supreme Court’s decision last year that effectively overturned the Chevron doctrine suggesting current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law. The doctrine gave agencies more lat itude in crafting regulations, allowing them to fill in the gaps when the legislation text is ambiguous. However, experts argue that in order to rescind a regula tion, agencies still have to go through the rulemaking process. Some believe the courts are going to be reluctant to overturn long standing interpretations of agencies’ authority. Meanwhile, agencies over the past decade have anticipated the courts potentially overturning the Chevron deference and have relied on it less in their rulemaking. According to experts, agencies are less inclined to refer to the Chevron deference as justification for their roles than they did 10 years ago. The difficulty of overturning existing rules could factor into the second Trump administration’s goal to identify at least 10 regulations or rules to be repealed for every new rule. The “10-to-1” executive order, issued on January 31, comes after the White House claimed Trump was able to eliminate five rules for every new rule during his first administration (https://tinyurl.com/48s2t62w). Regulatory experts said that claim ignores how the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) only counted “significant” actions as a new rule during Trump’s first deregulatory push. Meanwhile, OMB counted the elimination of smaller activities, including paperwork requirements and guidance documents, as well as rules that were rescinded by Congress, as contribut ing to the deregulation ratio. While Trump’s latest EO creates a leadership role for DOGE on deregulation, his “10-to-1” order put OMB Director Russell Vought in charge of overseeing agency regula tory plans. Trump has also reinstituted an EO from his first term that established “Regulatory Reform Task Forces” at agencies. Rebecca Guenard is the editor-in-chief of INFORM magazine, she can be contacted at rebecca.guenard@aocs.org.

Rebecca Guenard

In a new executive order (EO) signed on February 20, President Donald Trump directed agencies to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team, led by Elon Musk, and the Office of Management and Budget to rescind “unlawful regulations” and “regulations that undermine the national interest ( https://tinyurl.com/3nn62ndu).” The EO instructed agencies to limit their enforcement of certain regulations and gave them 60 days to provide a list of regulations the government should modify or eliminate. It spe cifically directs them to “preserve their limited enforcement resources by generally de-prioritizing actions to enforce regu lations that are based on anything other than the best reading of a statute and de-prioritizing actions to enforce regulations that go beyond the powers vested in the federal government by the Constitution.” Meanwhile, the EO directs agency heads to consult with DOGE team leads and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on any new regulations “as soon as practicable.” Trump has already directed a freeze on new regulations so his appointees can first review them. In a fact sheet, the White House said the EO “stops and reverses the regulatory over reach and abusive enforcement, ensuring that the operation of the government is responsible, lawful, and efficient.” The order was among a flurry of executive actions that puts Musk’s DOGE team, which is operating out of the exec utive office of the President, at the center of agency deci sion-making. DOGE teams working with the Office of Personnel Management have reportedly wielded significant power over the ongoing mass terminations of federal employees and deci sions to cut agency spending. Experts say the EO creates new conflicts of interest con cerns around Musk, whose businesses are impacted by a wide range of federal regulations. The White House has previously