Biden’s Policy Blitz Spurs Trump’s Day-One Reversal Pledge
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President Joe Biden has spent his final weeks in office looking to Trump-proof some of his biggest policy priorities, from environmental protections to Ukraine support and manufacturing subsidies. The incoming president isn’t amused.
Donald Trump has pledged that he’ll move immediately to reverse several actions undertaken by Biden through executive action and legal challenge. But he’s also fumed publicly about the efforts of the outgoing administration, accusing Biden of acting in bad faith and disrupting the smooth transfer of power.
The whiplash between administrations could come to define the early hours of Trump’s second term, adding to a spate of executive orders and actions that Trump is preparing, though not yet detailing, ahead of his second term. It also represents a substantial risk to investors seeking to capitalize on government actions and subsidies that could be quickly reversed.
Beneath the fray, Biden’s team is hoping that they might manage to box the new administration in, preserving key initiatives or creating a political reality that could even see the incoming administration eventually decide to finalize some Democratic priorities.
But the recent flap over Biden’s move this month to ban offshore drilling in 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters — where there’s little industry demand to begin with — as well as new standards for natural gas appliances and heating, has underscored the depth of Trump’ ire.
“We’ll put it back,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Jan. 7. “I’m going to put it back on day one. I’m going to have it revoked on day one.”
(Bloomberg Television via YouTube)
Trump has also seized on the blitz to blame Biden for imperiling the transition, despite late-hour executive actions being a feature of every presidency. His repeated suggestions that Biden has imperiled a coordinated hand-off appear designed to at least evoke the rhetoric Democrats employed after the Jan. 6 riots, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try and disrupt certification of Biden’s victory.
“They say we’re going to have a smooth transition. All they do is talk. It’s all talk,” Trump said.
In recent days, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a rule removing medical debt from credit reports, and Biden last month announced a fresh round of student debt cancellation.
Biden is finalizing moves to help spur data centers and artificial intelligence, which Trump has been mostly silent on, and may yet publish a list of drugs for Medicare to negotiate prices on, a key achievement of his administration. The Treasury Department has moved to box in any Trump attempt to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship.
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Republicans, including Trump, have criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to set new energy use rules for gas powered appliances including stoves, heaters, and furnaces, arguing they amounted to efforts to phase-out use of fossil fuels in favor of electricity.
And Biden’s team is moving to complete work on new executive orders to shore up cybersecurity and limit the export of key semiconductors.
Funding from Biden’s flagship bills also hangs in the balance, though unwinding that will be difficult. Biden’s team has been steadily announcing new funding for semiconductor manufacturing facilities and infrastructure projects. Contracts are generally in two stages: the earlier one is a deal that’s announced or awarded, while the other is when the contract has been signed, or obligated.
At a speech last month, Biden indicated he didn’t believe Trump had the political will to cancel ongoing projects.
“Will the next president stop a new electric battery factory in Liberty, North Carolina, that will create thousands of jobs?” Biden said. “Will he shut down a new solar factory being built in Cartersville, Georgia? Are they going to do that?”
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To claw back awarded but not finalized funding, Trump would likely need an act of Congress — and would then risk the blowback from cities and states who are set to see the money flow into their community already. Signed contracts are even harder to roll back. And Republicans are already toiling over how to proceed with one, or two, flagship bills on their own priorities, including extending Trump’s tax cuts.
Trump’s team has been careful to maintain some ambiguity about its day one moves — setting the stage for surprise reversals, as well as cases where they don’t bother to intervene.
Some files are being handed off for Trump to finish, should he want to. One is an investigation that sets the stage for potential new tariffs on Chinese-made semiconductor chips, known as foundational or legacy chips, which are less advanced than recent models but used ubiquitously. Trump’s transition team declined to comment on whether it would pick up the effort, though Trump has already pledged broad new tariffs on China.
But Trump has indicated an appetite for a legal challenge of some Biden initiatives, including the administration’s effort — authorized by Congress — to sell off unused border wall materials.
And the president-elect said he would fight the offshore move, despite precedent suggesting it could be difficult for him to challenge. In his remarks Jan. 7, Trump estimated that oil beneath U.S. ocean waters is worth more than the national debt — even though the expansive withdrawals, spanning all unleased waters off the east and west coasts, did not make changes to the western and central portions of the Gulf of Mexico where most oil industry activity and appetite is concentrated.
“That’s like the whole ocean,” he said. “They try to be sneaky.”
