Tariffs, treaty, regulations all face changes under second Trump administration

WASHINGTON—While some big voices in the plastics industry are keeping quiet about the impact of a second Donald Trump administration on their lobbying agenda, it seems certain it will bring environmental and trade policy changes to Washington.

Environmental groups, for their part, were apprehensive about what Trump 2.0 could mean to plastics policy in the nation's capital.

The most immediate question may be how the U.S. approaches the global plastics treaty, which has its fifth and final scheduled negotiating session in late November in South Korea.

Beyond that, Trump's appointees could put forward big policy changes on chemical recycling, single-use plastics procurement and other areas at key agencies.

On economic policy, Trump has said he plans much bigger tariffs than enacted in his first term.

The industry's two main trade associations in Washington, the American Chemistry Council and the Plastics Industry Association, both declined to comment on changes Trump could bring on environmental and recycling policies.

ACC pointed to its Nov. 6 statement emphasizing the importance of manufacturing and the chemical industry in health care and in building affordable housing and infrastructure while congratulating Trump.

But one environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that Trump's decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement in his first term meant that "we don't expect him to engage in the plastics treaty (or anything else proactively domestically) in any positive way."

"Given Trump's track record, plans to ramp up fossil fuel production and disdain for pollution control and science, we have good reason to fear his next administration will attempt to give free reign to plastic and petrochemical producers at the expense of communities and the environment," said Julie Teel Simmonds, CBD senior counsel.

For the plastics treaty, a Trump presidency could throw confusion into the U.S. negotiating position at the talks in South Korea.

President Joe Biden's administration in August said it was shifting the U.S. stance in favor of some caps or limits on virgin plastic production as well as having the treaty develop obligations around chemicals of concern in plastics and problematic plastic products.

But some Republicans in Congress came out strongly against production caps in October letters to Biden, echoing industry opposition to the Biden position on caps and suggesting that it would be difficult to get a treaty approved by the Senate.

One member of Congress who urged the Biden administration to take a tougher position in the talks, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., told Politico in a Nov. 5 story that a Trump presidency would derail the kind of treaty that he wanted.

"A Trump election would really spell doom, I think, for a strong treaty, at least one that includes the United States," said Huffman, who was part of a Congressional delegation to the last round of talks in Canada in April.

The Plastic Pollution Coalition said in a Nov. 7 statement that it hoped the U.S. negotiating team at the treaty talks would maintain the Biden administration's positions.

"Despite a Trump-Vance victory and GOP control of the Senate, the U.S. negotiating team will still represent the Biden-Harris Administration at INC-5," the coalition said.

"The plastics treaty is nearing finalization, and strong leadership by the U.S. negotiating team in Busan has the power to shift the entire treaty's trajectory. The U.S. negotiating team should not bind itself to a treaty that they believe will pass a GOP-led U.S. Congress or meet Trump's approval—history tells us this won't matter."

Outside the treaty, a Trump presidency could mean more tariffs, many of which were opposed by groups like the American Chemistry Council in Trump's first term as disruptive to supply chains.

On the campaign trail, Trump has said he wants 60 percent tariffs on imports from China and up to 20 percent on goods from other countries.

Tariffs in Trump's first term often divided the plastics industry. Sectors including vinyl flooring manufacturers and mold makers, for example, backed tariffs that protected their products.

Other parts of the industry, however, opposed some of those tariffs. Large plastics processors had urged the Trump administration to reject tariffs on Chinese-made molds, saying they raised costs.

But U.S. mold makers favor even higher tariffs on China. In May, when the Biden administration announced it was maintaining tariffs on Chinese molds at 25 percent, the American Mold Builders Association said the tariffs should instead be set between 30 and 50 percent.

ACC said it looked forward to working with the Trump administration trade team and Congress on policies that create a level playing field, including "more than tariffs."

"A prospective Trump Administration has proposed higher tariffs, and we are taking that seriously," said Jason Bernstein, ACC's director of global affairs, international trade and supply chain.

"If there were any doubts about the first Trump Administration's intent in this regard, ACC and its members have no such illusions now," he said. "However, we hope that this is the time to put aside any differences and work on a trade agenda that builds a strong and innovative U.S. chemicals sector.

"Building such a sector is going to take more than tariffs and involve work on addressing domestic and foreign regulatory policies and other market access barriers that make it difficult for U.S. producers to innovate and compete on a level playing field," he said.

Trump's win means uncertainty for a key plastics end market, the auto industry, with Honda saying that permanent tariffs on Mexico would impact the 160,000 vehicles it ships from Mexico to the U.S. and could cause the auto maker to look at shifting production, according to Automotive News, a sister publication to Plastics News.

In Washington regulatory policy, Trump appointees to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade Commission and other agencies could change Biden administration regulations that impact the plastics industry.

The FTC, for example, is in the middle of a rewrite of the environmental marketing rules known as the Green Guides that has included sharp debate about how to treat chemical recycling.

Industry and environmental groups have also sparred over Biden EPA proposals regulating chemical recycling, as well as the EPA's 2023 plastics strategy and a White House plastics strategy this year that called for limits on federal buying of single-use plastics.

Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former regional EPA administrator in President Barack Obama's administration, noted concerns but said it's too soon to make specific predictions.

"The short answer is we just don't know yet but there is great concern that the fabric of environmental rules are at risk," Enck said. "We know there is significant public support for reducing plastic pollution, the science is strong and we will be working harder than ever before to tackle these issues at the local, state and federal levels."

A plastics recycling trade group noted large pieces of federal work that will continue no matter who sits in the White House, and it pointed to an 83-page July report from the Biden administration, "Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities," outlining actions across the federal government.

"The lion's share of this work will continue, regardless of the Administration, in areas such as R&D, ocean cleanup, data collection, international trade, public-private partnerships, etc.," the Association of Plastic Recyclers said. "Addressing plastic pollution is not just an environmental or health issue—it's also directly connected to American competitiveness in the global economy."

Parts of the plastics industry's Washington agenda came into sharper focus in September when Congress introduced a bill that tracks parts of the federal policy framework for industry groups, calling for a national 30 percent recycled content standard for plastic packaging by 2030 and for rules to support the "rapid growth" of chemical recycling.

The environmental group Beyond Plastics, however, in September released a 27-point policy framework for the next president, including limits on new plastics plants and on chemical recycling, as well as national packaging reduction legislation and urging the U.S. government to join with countries in a "high ambition" coalition in the plastics treaty talks.

In an Oct. 1 webinar, Enck and other speakers pointed to stepped up actions they wanted the next administration to take.

"There's been a profound absence of effective action at the federal level to deal with the growing problem of plastics," Enck said.

Jo Banner, co-director of The Descendants Project, said the federal government needs stronger emissions controls on plastic plants and called for a moratorium on new chemical plant construction.

She pointed to the heavy petrochemical manufacturing presence in the 85-mile corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.

"We have the highest risk of cancer in the country, at the 95th percentile," Banner said. "Recent findings from Johns Hopkins University shows that some areas in my parish, St. John the Baptist Parish, have over 1,000 times the acceptable risk rate for cancer."

"My community has been deemed a sacrifice zone," she said.

As well, Sherri Mason, a microplastics researcher and director of director of Project NePTWNE at Gannon University in Erie, Pa., called on the federal government to fund more microplastics health research and to rescind a $182 million conditional loan guarantee for an International Recycling Group plastics facility proposed for Erie.

The loan guarantee, issued under the Inflation Reduction Act, is designed to fight climate change and help environmental justice communities, she said.

"This is [in] the poorest zip code in all of Pennsylvania," Mason said. "This is an environmental justice zone where they are planning to build this facility."

While Washington policy will shift in a second Trump term, with Republicans taking control of the Senate, the impact of the election was less clear in state capitols.

States that have pursued strong recycling policy agendas, like California and others that have passed extended producer responsibility legislation since 2021, are expected to continue on that path.

The Association of Plastic Recyclers said it expected states to continue with their focus on plastics and recycling legislation.

"U.S. states have been the traditional leaders in passing polices to improve recycling and reduce plastic pollution," APR said. "We expect that to continue and to be strong for many years to come because polls show there is widespread support to improve recycling and reduce plastic waste."

"APR's policy focus has been at the state level, and we will continue to prioritize working with state legislatures to improve recycling collection and increase the use of recycled plastics in place of virgin feedstocks," the group said.