The Trump administration is loosening restrictions on “super pollutant” chemicals that are highly potent greenhouse gases, claiming that allowing their increased use will drive down grocery prices.
The move is a reversal of President Donald Trump’s past position on hydrofluorocarbons. Experts and industry leaders are skeptical that consumers would save money on food because of this change, and allowing companies to continue using HFCs, chemicals typically used for refrigeration and air conditioning, could violate both congressional instructions and international treaty commitments.
The Trump administration has been under significant pressure to address increasing affordability concerns, with the president’s polling numbers on his handling of the economy dropping to record lows.
EPA head Lee Zeldin said HFCs have been “devastating” for food prices at a press conference with Trump on Thursday. “We’re going to see savings of $800 million” at supermarkets alone, he said.
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That’s virtually nothing for the consumer, said Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, estimating that the savings per consumer per year would be closer to $2.
“It’s nice that they are paying attention to affordability, but if they want to make a difference, it’s tariffs and the Iran war,” he said.
Some companies in the food and grocery industry have long advocated for reversing regulations around HFCs, claiming that alternatives increase costs for grocery stores. In 2025, the Trump administration proposed new regulations to push out the timeline for phasing out HFCs. The EPA plans to finalize those proposals today.
That’s an about-face from Trump’s posture on HFCs during his first term in office. In 2020, Trump signed a law passed with bipartisan support in Congress that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to phase out the use of HFCs. Then, in 2022, the Senate ratified an amendment to an international treaty that called for global reduction in the consumption of the extremely potent greenhouse gases. HFCs have a global warming potential hundreds of times greater than greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
Many industry groups supported the plan to phase out HFCs, including refrigeration companies, auto associations and the Chamber of Commerce. By the time Congress passed the 2020 law, industry was already investing heavily in alternative refrigerant chemicals.
During the Biden administration, the EPA’s modeling of the new HFC regulations found that the switch to different refrigerants could lead to cost savings for some in the industry.
On Thursday, Trump suggested that he wanted to find a way to repeal the 2020 law that he originally signed and end the HFC phase-out plan altogether.
“We’re going to get rid of the law that was signed quite a while ago, and we have to get rid of that, because ultimately we want to make it permanent,” he said.
An association of air conditioning and refrigeration companies immediately opposed Trump and Zeldin’s Thursday announcement, claiming that the changes will actually cause refrigerant prices to increase.
“The EPA has no analysis showing that delaying these dates will lower costs for consumers,” said Stephen Yurek, the president and CEO of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, in a press release.
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