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Trump Participates in an Announcement with the Administrator of the EPA, May 21, 2026

May 21, 2026 · The White House · 0:48:37

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump held an announcement event at the White House with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on May 21, 2026, flanked by grocery and food-retail executives. “Today is my honor to be discussing the taking of a very historic action to substantially lower costs for consumers, protect hundreds of thousands of jobs, and save Americans well over two billion dollars a year by officially terminating the Biden administration’s ridiculous regulations imposing costly requirements on refrigerators and air conditioners,” the President said.

The rules at issue, as he described them: the “technology transition rule,” which forced companies toward specific high-cost refrigerants and drove up the price of transporting and storing goods, and an emissions rule imposing leak-repair requirements on virtually all existing large-scale refrigeration systems. “Today’s reforms will deliver significant financial relief, saving American families and businesses more than $2.4 billion… each year,” he said, in lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, and lower air-conditioning costs. Administrator Zeldin followed, describing the prior rules as a “rushed, frantic, reckless sprint” to phase out reliable equipment for grocery stores, restaurants, and homes.

Why it matters

This is the Zeldin EPA’s marquee cost-of-living deregulation of 2026 as the administration presents it: a single action tying refrigerant policy to grocery prices, with a dated annual-savings figure attached. On the Energy & Permitting hub it is the benchmark against which the rule’s final form and the savings claim are tracked.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: termination of the refrigerant rules with $2.4 billion in stated annual savings and hundreds of thousands of jobs protected — as stated by the President, checkable against the EPA’s published rulemaking and regulatory impact analysis.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in an Announcement with the Administrator of the EPA,” The White House, May 21, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President and Administrator Zeldin at the announcement.