The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it is repealing Biden-era amendments to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, rolling back 2024 regulations that the Trump administration argues would have strangled America's coal sector. The repeal will save an estimated $670 million.
The earlier MATS rules, including the original 2012 rule and the 2020 Trump EPA rule that reaffirmed it, will remain in place. EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi said in a statement that those existing standards are "fully protective of human health risks."
What makes this story remarkable isn't the policy itself. It's who lined up against it.
Beijing Weighs In on American Energy Policy
According to the Daily Caller, on Aug. 11, 2025, the People's Republic of China submitted a public comment to the EPA opposing the repeal. Beijing's government told American regulators, in writing, that it wanted the Biden-era restrictions kept in place.
"The 2012 edition of the Technical Regulation of the Standard for Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) is too old to adapt to the current production technology and global environmental governance requirements."
China didn't stop there. The comment went on to explicitly reject the EPA's decision:
"We do not approve the EPA's decision to repeal the 2024 edition of the MATS and re-adopt the 2012 edition of the MATS. … This self-defeating environmental policy has created significant uncertainty in trade and increased operational risks for businesses."
Read that again. A foreign government, and not just any foreign government but America's chief economic and strategic rival, submitted a formal comment telling a U.S. regulatory agency how to manage American energy production. And its preferred outcome happens to be the one that hamstrings American coal.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin responded to a question from the Daily Caller News Foundation by calling it "very telling" that China would want to keep the Biden-era rules in place. He's right. When Beijing objects to a deregulatory action that benefits American energy producers, the policy is probably working.
Democrats and the CCP: Same Talking Points, Same Conclusion
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Democrats took to X to denounce the repeal, posting that "the EPA used to work to keep deadly neurotoxins out of our air, food, and water" and claiming the agency is "erasing protections that would have saved 11,000 lives every year just to burn more coal."
The framing is designed to terrify. The substance is designed to obscure.
What Senate Democrats conveniently leave out is that the 2012 MATS rule and the 2020 rule that reaffirmed it remain fully intact. The EPA isn't eliminating mercury protections. It is removing the Biden administration's additional regulatory layer, one that the Trump administration says was crafted not to protect health but to regulate coal out of existence.
Zeldin laid the argument out plainly on Friday:
"The Biden-Harris Administration's anti-coal regulations sought to regulate out of existence this vital sector of our energy economy. If implemented, these actions would have destroyed reliable American energy."
And then the key point:
"The Trump EPA knows that we can grow the economy, enhance baseload power, and protect human health and the environment all at the same time. It is not a binary choice and never should have been."
The Biden-era framework treated it as a binary choice. Coal or clean air. Growth or health. That false dilemma served a purpose: it justified regulations so burdensome that compliance became surrender.
Why China Cares About American Coal Regulations
There's a question worth asking that the environmental left will never ask: Why would the Chinese Communist Party care whether the United States rolls back a domestic emissions rule?
China is the world's largest coal consumer by an enormous margin. Its government has no interest in environmental governance for its own sake. What it does have is an interest in American energy being expensive, unreliable, and hobbled by regulation. Every constraint on American baseload power is a competitive advantage for Beijing.
When China tells the EPA that repealing the 2024 MATS amendments creates "significant uncertainty in trade" and "increased operational risks for businesses," the businesses it's worried about aren't American ones. The uncertainty China fears is the uncertainty of competing against a United States that actually uses its own energy resources.
The overlap between the Chinese government's position and the Democratic Party's position on this rule is not a coincidence. It's a convergence of interest. Both want American energy constrained. They just have different reasons for it.
Closing the Door on Foreign Interference in U.S. Rulemaking
Republican Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis has introduced legislation to bar American adversaries from participating in federal rulemaking by leaving public comments. The fact that such legislation is necessary tells you something about how porous the regulatory process has become.
The federal comment period exists so that American citizens, businesses, and stakeholders can weigh in on rules that affect their lives. It was never designed as a forum for hostile foreign governments to lobby against American energy independence. That Beijing felt comfortable submitting a formal objection to the EPA suggests it has grown accustomed to a regulatory apparatus that listens.
The Lummis legislation would shut that door. It should have been shut years ago.
The Real Stakes
The debate over MATS is not really a debate over mercury. The 2012 protections remain. The 2020 reaffirmation remains. The question is whether the federal government will use environmental regulation as a weapon against domestic energy production, layering rule upon rule until the economics of coal become impossible.
The Biden administration's answer was yes. China's answer is also yes. Senate Democrats agree.
The Trump EPA chose differently. And the coalition arrayed against that choice tells you everything you need to know about whose interests the Biden-era rules actually served.
