EPA’s latest climate regulation rollback will shift an economic advantage to Chinese appliance makers, according to U.S. refrigeration manufacturers.
President Donald Trump returned to office last year vowing to revive U.S. manufacturing. His administration has imposed costly trade levies, taken a pickax to regulations and worked to expand oil and gas drilling, all in the name of U.S. economic dominance. Trump promised in a Rose Garden speech last year that his trade policies would “supercharge our domestic industrial base” and “pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers, and ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”
But last month, the Trump administration rolled back yet another key climate regulation in a way that some U.S. companies said puts them at a market disadvantage. EPA gave grocery stores years more time to switch to buying freezers that aren’t made with a potent set of climate superpollutants — hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs can be tens of thousands of times more potent in driving warming than carbon dioxide.
Now, some U.S. appliance manufacturers say it will hurt their business and American consumers, allowing Chinese appliance manufacturers to flood the U.S. market with older, less environmentally friendly products. Delaying the phase-out of refrigerators that use HFCs will come down hard on the U.S.-based companies developed climate-friendlier chemicals to meet the federal limits, they said.
“This just gives foreign manufacturers the opportunity to continue selling their old legacy equipment into the market for another few years, so you’re basically rewarding the companies that did not invest and you’re punishing those companies that did invest,” said John Hurst, executive director of the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, which represents domestic manufacturers.
‘Can’t recoup that investment’
The rule EPA issued in May gave supermarkets and cold-storage warehouses a five- or six- year extension — compared with Biden-era deadlines in 2026 and 2027 — to stop buying new HFC-based systems and appliances when they replace their equipment. The Biden rules didn’t prevent companies from repairing existing systems, or require them to buy new ones.
EPA said the change would deliver $976 million in savings by 2050But those projections relied on a radically truncated cost-benefit analysis that fully accounted only for upfront cost savings from buying older, cheaper, HFC-based refrigeration systems.
EPA didn’t quantify the impact effect on U.S. manufacturers that had invented HFC alternatives and planned new product lines.
“From a manufacturing perspective, companies made the investment, and so it’s a sunk cost,” said Hurst, a former executive at manufacturer Lennox International who runs one of several industry group that backed policies to transition away from HFCs.
“There’s no return on the investment if they can’t sell the product. American manufacturers — or manufacturers that serve the domestic economy — put money into development and they can’t recoup that investment,” he said.
Manufacturers of alternative coolants are scattered across the country. That geographic variety led to unusual biparatisan support for the 2020 American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act, which required an American draw down of HFCs.
“Delaying the transition dates would undermine years of investment, create uncertainty, impose redundant cost, and prolong the demand for high [global warming potential] refrigerants… thus raising prices for retailers, manufacturers, and consumers,” said Scott Martin, a senior director at HillPhoenix, which manufacturers grocery refrigeration equipment that utilizes CO2 instead of HFCs, at EPA’s public hearing on the draft rule last year.
HillPhoenix tripled its workforce at a Georgia factory and significantly expanded staff in Virginia and Iowa to be ready to build products along EPA’s original timeline, Martin said.
U.S. manufacturers converted their entire manufacturing lines to align with that Biden-era HFC technology transition rule, Solstice Advanced Materials, which manufacturers HFC alternatives, warned EPA in comments on its draft rule.
“Preserving these requirements as much as possible is important to protecting the U.S. manufacturing base,” the company said. Solstice suggested shorter extensions that might give food retailers additional time without “undermining the capital investments and supply chain shifts businesses made in reliance on the preexisting technology transition timelines and the phasedown schedule.”
Lennox International, which manufactures refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps, told EPA in October that it had “millions of dollars invested in raw materials. … If the compliance date is delayed, existing orders will be canceled, and these materials will become excess inventory driving price inflation and higher costs to the consumers of these products.”
After EPA telegraphed plans for a delay, Lennox saw a dip in orders in the last quarter of 2025, said Eric Zito, the company’s head of government affairs.
Not all manufacturers of HFC alternatives saw the change as a major problem.
The transition to HFC alternatives “is already well advanced, particularly in residential and light commercial applications,” said Heather Connors, a Chemours spokesperson. Connors said the move wouldn’t change “underlying demand fundamentals” and customers would continue to update equipment with “long-term regulatory trajectories” in mind.
But other manufacturers said the rule would make it harder for U.S. companies to compete with foreign competitors, who would be able to sell older, less climate-friendly models to the U.S. grocery industry at cheaper prices.
Chinese manufacturers, in particular, haven’t had to invest in research and development to bring alternative cooling equipment to the market, as their U.S. competitors have done. The 2017 global treaty phasing down HFCs gave them more time to transition.
“Importers who have never done that investment don’t have that same increased cost, and so they can come in at a lower price point,” said Alex Ayers, who heads government affairs at the Heating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Distributors International, which represents wholesale distributors.
The law Trump signed in 2020 to transition to climate-friendly coolants was designed to help U.S. companies sell the alternatives they had invented globally, he said. But “slowing down the U.S. adoption of that slows down that ability for American manufacturers to export these technologies.”
