The Trump administration focuses on regulatory rollbacks, America’s defense industry, tariffs, and the environment.

This week, President Trump signed over 10 executive orders related to efforts to strengthen America’s defense industry, bolster coal production and electric grid management, and roll back other regulations it views as restrictive or potentially unlawful.

Latham lawyers are carefully monitoring the rollout of President Trump’s policy priorities through executive orders, agency actions, and installment of new personnel. Below is a high-level overview of these actions over the past week, broken down by topic, along with updates on related court challenges, personnel changes, and other breaking developments in their implementation.

Administrative State

In our Week 5 in Review, we discussed President Trump’s executive order (EO 14219), which provided a blueprint for agencies to roll back regulations. This week, President Trump continued to pursue the same objective:

• President Trump issued a memorandum on April 9 directing agencies to prioritize their “review-and-repeal” efforts on specific Supreme Court decisions, taking aim at a wide range of subject areas such as regulations promulgated in reliance on the Chevron doctrine, agencies’ “in-house courts,” regulations where costs may not have been “properly consider[ed],” the Clean Water Act, the Takings Clause, “racially discriminatory rules,” and the “equal treatment of religious institutions.” The memorandum instructs agency heads to finalize the repeal of “unlawful regulations” without notice and comment if consistent with the “good cause” exception in the Administrative Procedure Act. Additionally, agencies must submit a one-page summary for each regulation identified under Executive Order 14219 but not targeted for repeal, explaining the decision not to repeal.
• On April 9, President Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to identify and propose the rescission or modification of regulations that may impose “anti-competitive restraints.”

Energy and Environment

This week, the Trump administration announced several changes within the environment and energy space:

• An April 8 executive order seeks to boost coal production and exports. It mandates actions such as prioritizing coal leasing on federal lands, ending the coal leasing moratorium, and reviewing regulations that may discourage coal production, among other directives. For more information on this executive order, see this blog post.
• An April 8 executive order aims to eliminate “illegitimate impediments” to using energy sources such as oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical minerals, and nuclear energy. It includes a directive to identify and halt the enforcement of state laws that may burden these energy sources, especially those addressing climate change.
• An April 8 executive order directs the Secretary of Energy to take actions to address electricity demand. This includes streamlining processes for issuing orders to enable electric grids to operate at maximum capacity during anticipated grid failures and analyzing reserve margins for bulk power systems regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
• On April 9, President Trump signed an executive order directing certain agencies and sub-agency components to incorporate a one-year sunset provision into existing energy production regulations by September 30, 2025. This applies to a long list of identified energy-related statutes. The sunset provisions must allow public comments such as through a request for information, on the costs and benefits of each regulation. However, a “request for information” itself does not “automatically extend” the sunset date.
  
  Existing regulations can be extended only if Agencies find such an extension is warranted, but such extensions are limited to five years. New regulations also must have a sunset date “not more than 5 years in the future.”

Trade and Tariffs

As discussed in our Week 11 in Review and our blog post White House Announces 10% Tariff on All Imports, Higher Rates for Specific Countries, on April 2, President Trump signed executive orders imposing a baseline 10% tariff on imports with additional reciprocal tariffs for specific countries. On April 8, in response to China’s imposition of a 34% tariff on US imports, President Trump issued an amended executive order imposing 84% retaliatory tariffs on all Chinese imports and increasing the “ad valorem rate of duty” from 30% to 90%.

On April 9, President Trump signed another amended executive order pausing reciprocal tariffs for 90 days and increasing tariffs on all Chinese imports to 125%. According to news reports, the Trump administration clarified on April 10 that tariffs imposed on China totaled 145%, incorporating a previous 20% tariff imposed on Chinese products on March 3. On April 11, China increased tariffs on US imports to 125%.

Federal Workforce

Legal Challenges

As discussed in our Week 8 in Review, a California federal court previously ordered various federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently fired probationary employees. On April 8, the Supreme Court held that the nonprofit plaintiffs challenging the firing of 16,000 probationary employees lacked standing, staying the California court’s order while litigation continues in the lower courts.

A Maryland federal court also previously ordered certain federal agencies to reinstate probationary employees residing or working in states that filed a lawsuit. On April 9, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit stayed the order, finding that the district court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear the claims.

Banking

On March 28, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced that they intend to issue a proposal to rescind the Community Reinvestment Act rule. For more details on this announcement, see this blog post.

Maritime

On April 9, President Trump signed an executive order with a number of directives or action plans and reports to revitalize the US shipbuilding industry and its workforce.

Defense

On April 9, President Trump signed an executive order issuing a number of directives to enhance the United States’ defense capabilities and industrial base, and reforming the foreign defense sales system. Such directives include executing existing arms transfer policies, reevaluating restrictions, and updating congressional certification thresholds.

On April 9, President Trump signed an executive order to reform the Department of Defense’s acquisition process. Among other directives, the order instructs the department to:

• conduct an internal review of related guides, manuals, and regulations to revise (or eliminate) regulations as necessary and to streamline acquisitions;
• submit a plan to reform and train the acquisition workforce; and
• conduct a review of all major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) for potential cancellation based on criteria such as being over 15% behind schedule, 15% over budget, failing to meet key performance parameters, or misaligned with the Secretary of Defense’s mission priorities.

Appointments

• On April 9, the Senate confirmed Paul Atkins as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For more information on Paul Atkins, please see this blog post.
• On April 10, the Senate confirmed Mark Meador as Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Meador previously worked in private practice, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation Tech Policy Center, and has experience working as a trial attorney in Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division during President Trump’s first administration.
• President Trump previously removed Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board. Federal district courts in Washington, D.C. blocked such removals, requiring the reinstatement of Wilcox and Harris. However, on April 9, the Supreme Court stayed such orders, allowing President Trump to proceed with the removals while litigation continues.

Other Recent Regulatory Thought Leadership

• On March 24, the General Services Administration announced an initiative to overhaul the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) to streamline the authorization process and automate security assessments. For more information on this announcement, please see this blog post.

• On March 20, the SEC clarified that Proof-of-Work crypto mining does not involve securities. For more information on this announcement, please see this blog post.