Gregory Jaffe was Senior Advisor for Regulatory Affairs in the Office of the Secretary at USDA during the Biden Administration. He is now Founder and President of a policy consulting firm based in Washington DC, specializing in agriculture, food, environmental, and climate policy, both domestic and international.
In this exclusive interview with Il Bioeconomista, he talks about the prospects for the bioeconomy in the United States under the new Trump Administration and the relations between the United States and the European Union in this new era of tariffs.
“The Trump Administration – Jaffe says – will need to ensure the United States has an enabling environment that supports biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and the bioeconomy”.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
Mr Jaffe, the US Administration of President Donald Trump has revoked Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy,” originally issued on September 12, 2022. What does it mean for the bioeconomy in the US?
President Biden’s Executive Order 14081 achieved much of its purpose, which was for the federal government to identify the existing federal programs that support different aspects of the bioeconomy (e.g., research, workforce, biomass, biomanufacturing, etc.) and then prioritize federal investments and polices to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing to build the US domestic bioeconomy. While the Executive order has been revoked, I am cautiously optimistic that many of the federal programs and policies that the federal government has to support building the US bioeconomy (which were established under both Republican and Democratic administrations) will continue and expand in the Trump Administration.
While the Trump Administration has not released any specific executive orders or policy statements about bioeconomy, they have made some positive statements about industries that are integral parts of the US bioeconomy. President Trump issued three executive orders addressing the need to support American energy independence (#14154, 14156, and 14213) and in each of those orders, “biofuels” is included as an important energy source along with oil, natural gas, coal, etc. Similarly, President Trump issued an order about American timber that mentioned the importance of this type of biomass for the production of bioenergy. Finally, I understand that a number of the grant and loan programs at different federal departments that support biobased product manufacturing are moving forward accepting and processing applications in 2025.
Do you think that programs like Biopreferred could be now at risk in the US?
The BioPreferred program is an extremely popular program. In FY24, the USDA BioPreferred® catalog of biobased products added 1,318 net new products and 449 net new companies offering those products. Together with the FY23 additions of 1,517 net new products and 559 net new companies offering those products, that’s a total of 2,835 new products and 1,008 new companies in two years. In all there are now more than 2,359 companies and 10,715 products actively participating in the BioPreferred® program (and those numbers include companies and products produced outside the US). Those products are given a preference for federal procurement and the BioPreferred label is sought after by consumers.
The BioPreferred program was established in the Farm Bill in 2002 and no one in Congress has suggested eliminating it. It is a relatively inexpensive program to operate and not an expensive or cumbersome process for a company to participate in. So, I think this program will continue and hopefully grow as more biobased products enter commerce in the next few years.
President Trump is not a big fan of green policies, but even a Republican State like Nebraska has heavily invested in bioeconomy infrastructure under Executive Order 14081 in order to lead the world in the medium-term transition from fossil-based industrial production to energy-saving, low-carbon biomanufacturing. What role can States now play to support and attract investments in the bioeconomy?
When I worked at USDA leading our efforts on building the bioeconomy, I never thought of supporting this part of the economy as “green policy” (“green policy” is not a phrase I ever heard used during my time in the federal government working on bioeconomy). Building the bioeconomy achieves a number of policy objectives of the federal government such as: (1) providing economic opportunities to farmers, (2) increasing economic development in rural communities from new manufacturing businesses that create good paying jobs, (3) strengthening the economy and national security by building resilient, domestic supply chains for important products (e.g., fertilizers, energy), (4) making agriculture more sustainable by better utilizating existing biomass, and (5) producing products that reduce our reliance on petroleum-based products. I think these reasons for building the bioeconomy should be important to all nations and sub-national governmental entities, such as the 50 states in the US.
States, such as Nebraska, have a critical role to play in supporting and attracting investments to their states, including investments in their bioeconomy. They know the assets they have available in their states for biobased products – their farms and farmers, the existing and potenial biomass, the manufacturing and transportation infrastructure, the workforce, etc.— and have policies and programs to bring economic opportunities to their state. If states establish the proper enabling environment to grow the bioeconomy and provide resources to bring necessary partnerships together, building the bioeconomy is a win-win proposition for states.
From your point of view, how can the Trump-Vance Administration secure US leadership in the growing industry of biomanufacturing by fostering innovation, building domestic infrastructure, and improving regulatory processes.
The Trump Administration will need to ensure the United States has an enabling environment that supports biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and the bioeconomy. That enabling environment includes supporting relevant R&D, helping develop the needed workforce, ensuring regulatory processes are transparent, efficient and predictable, providing support for building the needed infrastructure, creating incentives for investment, and educating consumers about the benefits of biobased products. However, the federal government has limited resources to support the bioeconomy. Therefore, it should work with the many stakeholders involved in developing biobased products (e.g. companies, universities, farmers, etc.) to analyze the steps needed to build the bioeconomy throughout the supply chain – from research to develop a product to product purchase by a consumer – and identify the current bottlenecks limiting biobased product development. Then, the government can establish policies or make critical investments to overcome those bottlenecks. For example, the United States currently lacks sufficient infrastructure capacity to test whether a biobased product’s production process will be technically and economically feasible at commercial scale. The Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture now all have programs which are investing in building that capacity and are providing funding to companies at that stage in the development process.
To build the bioeconomy, there needs to be collaboration among different entities. Do you see today potential collaborations opportunities between the US and the EU stakeholders? If yes, where?
The United States and the European Union each have many companies and other stakeholders who have collaborated on bioeconomy in the past and I expect continued collaboration in the future. There are many already established European and American companies with commercialized biobased products who manufacture and sell those products in both these geographic regions (e.g. Novenesis is a Danish company but has a significant presence in the United States helping build the US bioeconomy). Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic work together to carry out the basic research that are the building blocks for the bioeconomy (e.g., the CRISPR gene editing technique was discovered by scientists from the US and Europe working together). And many new start-up bioeconomy companies look to collaborate and build markets in both geographies (e.g., European sustainable protein companies are looking at the US market and US biostimulant companies are looking at the European market). I think these collaborations will continue because many of the objectives for building a strong bioeconomy (mentioned in my previous answer) are important to both the United States and the EU.
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