Since his inauguration, President Trump has announced executive orders, presidential memoranda, staffing changes and other actions with far-reaching implications for companies globally. Below is a collection of S&C’s insights on how these policy shifts may affect key sectors and how businesses can adapt to the changing landscape.
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February 6, 2025
On February 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum directing U.S. agencies to tighten enforcement of existing U.S. economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran and to impose new sanctions and other measures against the country. The Memorandum directs the Secretary of the Treasury and other officials to, among other things, impose a “robust and continual sanctions enforcement campaign,” to “issue updated guidance to all relevant business sectors,” and to consider requiring financial institutions to conduct additional due diligence on Iran-related transactions.
February 4, 2025
The transition of federal antitrust leadership is underway. As the new leadership assumes responsibility, they inherit a long list of new enforcement lawsuits and other regulatory actions that the prior leadership undertook shortly before the transition. We take stock of the various actions and the outlook for them moving forward.
February 3, 2025
On February 1, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued a trio of executive orders imposing tariffs on goods imported to the United States from Canada, Mexico, and China. The orders announce (i) a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, with the exception of Canadian energy products, which are subject to a lesser 10% tariff, and (ii) a 10% tariff on all imports from China. The measures take effect almost immediately, on February 4, 2025. Their enactment already has triggered plans for retaliatory trade measures by the affected countries.
January 30, 2025
On January 27, 2025, President Trump removed Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Commissioners Charlotte Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels and National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, all Democrats, in a series of unprecedented moves. The removed officials all indicated they intend to, or are considering, filing legal challenges to their removals. The removals leave both federal agencies without a quorum.
January 29, 2025
On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued a memorandum initiating a broad-scale review of U.S. trade policy. The memorandum orders the heads of several executive agencies to (i) comprehensively review the reasons for the U.S. trade deficit, and (ii) conduct systematic reviews and submit reports recommending potential revisions to existing trade measures—including tariffs, the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement, antidumping and countervailing duty laws, trade regulations towards China, intellectual property protections, and export controls. The memorandum and other recent developments signal the administration’s likely expansion of trade measures that could substantially affect companies’ operations and global supply chains.
January 24, 2025
President Trump has issued two Executive Orders on artificial intelligence. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an Executive Order revoking Executive Order 14110 titled “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” issued on October 30, 2023. On January 23, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.”
January 24, 2025
On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued a regulatory freeze memorandum “order[ing] all executive departments and agencies” to:
- refrain from proposing or issuing any “rule” in any manner, until it is reviewed and approved by a department or agency head appointed or designated by President Trump;
- “immediately” withdraw rules sent for publication, but not yet published, to ensure they can be reviewed and approved by a Trump administration official; and
- “consider” postponing for 60 days from the date of the Freeze Memo the effective dates of rules that have been issued but have not taken effect, and opening a comment period to allow the public to provide comment on “issues of fact, law, and policy” raised by such rules.
January 24, 2025
President Trump has signed an Executive Order titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” which has the objective of “protecting and promoting fair and open access to banking services for all law-abiding individual citizens and private-sector entities alike.”
January 23, 2025
On January 20, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order directing the U.S. Secretary of State to recommend within 14 days whether to designate cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorists, a move with potentially significant corporate enforcement and compliance implications.
January 23, 2025
On January 23, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” that establishes the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets to review all “regulations, guidance documents, orders, or other items that affect the digital asset sector” and issue a report to the President proposing a Federal regulatory framework for digital assets.
The SEC repealed SAB 121 which had presented significant challenges for regulated financial institutions (among others) seeking to provide custody or certain other services involving crypto assets.
January 22, 2025
President Trump has taken significant actions to roll back DEI programs through executive orders, including requiring the Attorney General to recommend measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal DEI practices; cancelling affirmative action requirements for federal contractors; establishing a federal policy of two genders only; and ceasing virtually all DEI-related activities in the federal workforce.