US President Donald Trump’s administration this week intends to unveil a plan to trim regulations it believes constrain US manufacturing growth, potentially affecting environmental permits, worker safety and labor rules, an administration official said.

The US Department of Commerce’s regulations “hit list” recommendations follow more than three months of study and consultation with industry on ways to streamline regulations and ease burdens on manufacturing firms.

A Trump administration official with knowledge of the recommendations to be sent to the White House said the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) complex permitting rules would be a key focus, echoing comments to reporters by US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross last month.

The 171 public comments submitted by companies and industry groups offer a strong hint to priorities for Commerce’s streamlining efforts, with numerous industry groups and firms complaining that EPA air quality permit rules for new facilities are often redundant.

The report is to analyze the submissions and “will identify a lot of problems and lay out ways to take responsible actions,” said the official, who declined to be identified.

The process has looked at many regulations finalized under former US president Barack Obama.

A common demand from industry was that the Trump administration should reject a planned tightening of ozone rules under the US Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards, with several groups arguing this would expose them to increased permitting hurdles for new facilities, raising costs.

3M Co said other permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act contained “overlapping rules, redundant requirements, conflicts between rules and undue complexity.”

The National Association of Manufacturers said the EPA’s review requirements for new sources of emissions such as factories, can add US$100,000 in costs for modeling air quality at a new facility and delay factory expansions by 18 months.

It added that the EPA should find ways to ease burdens for smaller projects and smaller firms.

Also drawing complaints from construction groups and iron foundries is an incoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule reducing by 80 percent the amount of crystalline silica dust that can be inhaled.

The dust, common on construction sites, can cause lung cancer, according to OSHA, but industry groups say reducing it to those levels would be prohibitively expensive.

“To meet these much lower levels, new engineering controls and other measures will become necessary within the roofing industry,” the National Roofing Contractors Association said.

Trump has already taken steps to roll back some not fully completed Obama-era environmental regulations such as restrictions on coal-fired power plants and a clean water rule greatly restricting runoff into small streams.

However, the Commerce list might target some rules already on the books.

“We are at the outset of what we think will be a very intense deregulatory agenda from the Trump team,” said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen which is a consumer watchdog group. “We are concerned that they are looking to gut regulations that benefit workers and benefit consumers.”

Another OSHA rule that drew industry complaints is one that further reduces worker exposure to beryllium, another potential carcinogen, that became effective on May 20 after a decade-long rulemaking effort.