VINACHEM

The US government has slowed down the introduction of new regulations and provided the chemical industry with some significant policy wins, although fostering rail competition had some setbacks.

CHEMS GET BREAK FROM NEW REGULATIONS

The administration of President Donald Trump has introduced a policy that is requiring federal agencies to purge 10 regulations if they want to adopt a new one.

The new policy is discouraging federal agencies from introducing new regulations, said Eric Byer, president and CEO of the Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD). “They know if they issue regulations, they have to find 10 they have to whack.”

The federal government is also focused on purging regulations that are duplicative or unnecessary, Byer said. Many agencies that are key for chemical regulations are pursuing this, including the Department of Transportation (DoT), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Notably, the EPA embarked on a widespread review of regulations that directly affect the chemical industry.

Plants that rely on ethylene oxide (EO) to sterilize medical equipment no longer need to comply with the EO provision in the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP).

The EPA also allowed several chemical plants to be excluded from the Hazardous Organic NESHAP (HON) rule. Many of them produce commodity plastics and petrochemicals, as shown here.

Recently, the House Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives have included language in an appropriations bill that will prohibit funding the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) of the EPA, according to the ACC.

The IRIS program has led to what the ACC describes as overly restrictive regulations governing formaldehyde, EO, hexavalent chromium and inorganic arsenic.

A bill introduced in Congress would permanently prohibit the use of IRIS assessments in federal rulemaking.

ACC GOALS FOR TSCA

The ACC is targeting provisions in nation’s safety program that are causing the EPA to miss deadlines to approve new chemicals for commercial use and that is making reviews for existing chemicals more cumbersome.

The program is known as the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

For new chemicals, the ACC wants the New Chemical Framework Rule to be rescinded because it fixes none of the problems that is causing the EPA to consistently miss its 90-day deadline to complete reviews for new chemicals.

For existing chemicals, the ACC flagged the Risk Evaluation Framework Rule, which, among other things, assumed that employees were not properly using personal protective equipment (PPE) when handling chemicals.

SETBACK FOR US RAIL COMPETITION

An appeals court had recently suspended the nation’s reciprocal switching program and sent it back for review to the Surface Transportation Board (STB), the nation’s main railroad regulator.

The chemical industry has supported reciprocal switching and argued that it would open rail carriers to more competition and improve service. Under reciprocal switching, one railroad carrier handles a customer’s cargo on behalf of another railroad carrier.

The STB finalized a rule in mid-2024 that was intended to make reciprocal switching easier to request when rail service was proven to be inadequate.

The new rule was challenged by railroad companies, and the metrics used to measure inadequate service failed to pass muster before the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

A better approach could be focusing on competition instead of service, said Jeff Sloan, senior director of regulatory affairs for the ACC. The STB can make service or competition the rationale for granting reciprocal switching. Competition may not face the same restrictions that left the current rule vulnerable to lawsuits.

Moreover, the administration of US President Donald Trump has placed a priority on fostering competition, Sloan said.

REPORTED RAIL MERGERS WOULD ERODE COMPETITION

Competition could erode further if the rail industry further consolidates as reported by the media.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Union Pacific is in preliminary talks to acquire Norfolk Southern.

Reuters reported on 22 July that BNSF Railway hired Goldman Sachs as a banker while CSX is seeking a banker. Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF, later denied BNSF is working with Goldman to acquire a competitor, in an interview with CNBC.

Those companies make up four of the six Class I freight railroads in North America. If those mergers took place, they would reduce the number to four.

“These mergers end up costing time and money for our businesses on the shipper side,” Byer said.

The recent merger between Canada Pacific (CP) and Kansas City Southern has already compromised service, according to a 17 June letter from the chairman of the STB.

Customers are suffering from delays, missed switches and congestion as part of the merger’s technology changeover, according to the letter.

CHEMS MAY GET ANOTHER CHANCE TO REPEAL SUPERFUND TAX

The chemical industry with another opportunity to repeal the Superfund tax if the House of Representatives considers another tax bill in the autumn, Byer said.

The tax imposed duties on several building-block chemicals and their derivatives. The chemical industry has advocated for the removal of the tax, and the tax bill offered it one of its best chances to get it repealed.

The chemical industry’s last opportunity to repeal the tax was in the tax bill passed earlier in 2025. It made many favorable provisions of 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent. However, it did not repeal the Superfund tax, since legislators did not want to overburden the bill with too many provisions.

Other opportunities could be an omnibus bill in the autumn or another tax bill in the spring, Byer said.

US HAS OPENING TO REVISIT CHEMS ANTITERRORISM PROGRAM

There are tentative signs that the US could have a chance to revive its national chemical-site antiterrorism program, known as the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS).

The program lapsed two years ago, leaving the chemical industry without a national anti-terrorism program at a time of heightened geopolitical risk.

A new representative, Andrew Garbarino (Republican-New York) was chosen as the next chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

The new chairman could create an opening to reconsider reviving the CFATS program.