The White House said the rollback will reduce grocery, transportation, and home cooling costs while preserving manufacturing and refrigeration jobs.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday reversing Biden-era refrigerant regulations that the administration says increased costs for grocery stores, restaurants, transport companies, and American consumers.
Trump announced the action alongside grocery chain executives and senior administration officials, describing the repeal as part of a broader deregulatory effort aimed at lowering household expenses and reducing burdens on businesses.
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According to the White House, the policy changes are expected to save Americans approximately $2.4 billion annually.
Trump said the order terminates regulations involving refrigeration systems and air conditioning units that were implemented during the Biden administration under environmental transition rules.
“The so-called technology transition rule, which was crazy, forced companies to adopt specific high-cost refrigerants, massively driving up the price of transporting and storing refrigerated goods,” Trump said during remarks at the White House.
He argued that businesses, including grocery stores and restaurants, were pressured to replace existing refrigeration systems with more expensive equipment.
“Many grocery stores and restaurants had no choice but to replace the refrigerators entirely,” Trump said. “These costs rose.”
The president also stated that residential air conditioning systems became substantially more expensive under the prior regulations.
“The rule also drove up the cost of living by forcing consumers to purchase higher cost residential air conditioning units,” Trump said.
The executive order targets two major Biden-era environmental rules involving refrigerant standards and emissions compliance requirements for large-scale refrigeration systems.
According to the administration, the rollback includes changes to the “Technology Transitions Rule,” which required adoption of newer refrigerants, and revisions to the “Emissions Reduction and Reclamation Rule,” which imposed leak repair and compliance mandates on refrigeration operators.
Trump argued the regulations not only increased costs but also created manufacturing and supply chain challenges.
“It created national security risk by adding additional hurdles to the already complicated process of manufacturing semiconductors,” he said.
The White House stated that reversing the refrigerant transition requirements would protect more than 350,000 skilled American jobs while saving consumers more than $900 million annually, including more than $800 million tied directly to grocery store operations.
Administration officials also said changes to emissions compliance rules could save refrigerated transport companies up to $1.5 billion.
Trump said the reforms would help reduce food prices, transportation costs, and utility expenses without harming environmental standards.
“Thanks to today’s reforms, the American people have lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, lower cost of air conditioning, at no detriment at all to our country, zero, including environmental detriment,” he said.
The president framed the order as part of a larger campaign to dismantle federal regulations imposed during the Biden administration.
“My administration’s historic deregulatory agenda already saved our country an estimated $1.2 trillion,” Trump said.
He added that the previous regulations made refrigeration and cooling equipment increasingly unaffordable for small businesses and consumers.
“It just made life worse, and it drove up costs tremendously,” Trump said.
The White House said the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the changes will provide financial relief across multiple sectors dependent on refrigeration infrastructure, including supermarkets, food distributors, restaurants, and medical supply transport operations.
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