Within hours of taking office, the Trump administration put a freeze on federal regulations that could include the fair-play rules on livestock marketing issued last month and animal-welfare rules for organic farms issued last week. The new administration will have its first full workday of control at USDA today, with Sam Clovis, a senior adviser during the presidential campaign, as the top Trump official until the Senate confirms Sonny Perdue as agriculture secretary.
Clovis, a former college professor in Iowa, told KSCJ radio in Sioux City that Trump has a very conservative agenda and that biofuels will have a major role in U.S. energy production. Clovis said he took an oath of office on Friday and would set up “our beachhead team” at USDA.
A civil servant, Michael Young, director of USDA’s Office of Budget and Program Analysis, was appointed by the departing Obama administration as acting secretary pending Perdue’s confirmation, sources told The Hagstrom Report. He would be expected to heed instructions from the new administration.
During the campaign, Clovis was a lead spokesman for Trump’s views on agriculture. He assured farmers and ranchers that the EPA “Waters of the United States” rule would be ditched, that corn ethanol would be part of U.S. energy independence, and that immigration laws will be enforced, but with an eye to agricultural production. “We need to formulate a plan,” Clovis said on the AgriTalk radio program in September. “Part of that operation will be to sit down with farmers and ranchers to make sure we do not impose rules or jump the gun on issues that will adversely affect them.” By some estimates, two-thirds of farm workers are undocumented.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus ordered a government-wide freeze on regulations, a standard step for a new administration. Under it, agencies are not to propose new regulations until a Trump appointee approves them and they must withdraw regulations waiting for publication in the Federal Register.
For regulations that were published but not yet in effect, “temporarily postpone their effective date by 60 days from the date of this memorandum,” wrote Priebus, a provision that could apply to the livestock marketing rules, announced on Dec. 14 with a 60-day period before taking effect, and the organic livestock rule, which was published last Thursday with an effective date of March 20, 2018. Groups representing large-scale conventional agriculture have called on Congress or the Trump administration to overturn the rules.
“Where appropriate and as permitted by law, you should consider proposing for notice and comment a rule to delay the effective date for regulations beyond that 60-day period,” said Priebus. “In cases where the effective date has been delayed in order to review questions of fact, law or policy, you should consider potentially proposing further notice-and-comment rulemaking.”
Trump sent a long list of top-level nominees to the Senate on his first day in office, including Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad to be U.S. ambassador to China and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. Not on the list was Perdue, who was announced by Trump as his USDA nominee the day before inauguration.