By Freddie Dawson, Senior editor, Tamarind Intelligence
The first six months of the second Trump administration can be defined by tariffs, executive orders and no further action on reforming the issues facing the American vaping market.
President Donald Trump embarked on his second term as president having promised to “save flavored vaping” in the U.S. in the lead up to the election. This has not yet happened despite a flurry of executive orders – at least 157 that have been published in the U.S. Federal Register as of May 23. (More have been announced but that was the date of the last one published at the time of writing.)
Many vaping advocates had hoped he might use an executive order to reset or reassess the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Pre-Market Tobacco Application (PMTA) process. Thus far this has not happened and, instead, there have been some comments that could be construed as concerning.
There was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the long-running case with the vaping company Wages and White Lion Investments – doing business as Triton Distribution – and the vaping company Vapetasia. The Supreme Court unanimously decided to vacate and remand the appealed Fifth Circuit Court decision that had been in favor of the companies over whether the FDA had been right to issue market denial orders (MDOs) to the them.
This was a disappointment for vaping advocates. The companies had argued the FDA had been arbitrary and capricious in the changes it made to PMTA requirements while also being unclear about those changes and what minimum requisites would need to be included to successfully be granted a market authorization and be considered a legal product able to be sold in the American market. Advocates hoped a decision in favor of the vaping companies would confirm the FDA approach had been wrong and pave the way for the new administration to implement a new policy.
Instead, the Supreme Court mostly rejected the vaping companies’ arguments. It did not arbitrate on all issues presented and returned the case to the lower court for further work, making the decision not a total defeat. However, it was a pretty galling blow for those wanting to see a change. Many of them hoped the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) – now under new management – would even decline to continue to argue the case following the change in leadership.
Instead, they appeared to fully embrace the prior approach. A HHS spokesperson welcomed the Supreme Court decision. They said it represented confirmation that the approach taken by the FDA – including under the administration of former Democratic president Joe Biden – was the correct one. “The recent Supreme Court ruling supports the FDA’s efforts to regulate e-cigarette products in line with the standards outlined in the Tobacco Control Act,” a spokesperson said.
Beyond this, comments by the new HHS secretary – Robert Kennedy Jr and head of the FDA – Marty Makary could also be construed to be viewed as negative takes on vaping from major administration figures.
Both have been questioned by Florida Republican Senator Ashley Moody on what they will do to combat Chinese vaping products illicitly on the U.S. market. Makary told Moody he agreed that vaping products were proliferating on the American market and that this was due to the Chinese flooding it with cheap supplies.
He said public health research would never be able to properly study them as the market moved faster than the science could but that the FDA could collaborate with other U.S. government departments to increase enforcement actions. “The Office of Inspections and Investigations has a lot of people with guns, and they do enforcement and raids,” he said.
Several vaping commentators did not react well to this – particularly on the semi-serious threat of armed enforcement raids. However, it could also be theoretically read that Makary was implying the enforcement action would be directed at imported Chinese vaping products and that emphasis was placed on revamping the FDA’s approach to PMTAs.
Kennedy Jr’s later comments in answer to questions from Senator Moody could potentially support such a reading. He told her that the FDA had created its own backlog and had deliberately dragged its feet on approvals for American vaping companies, which had been acting responsibly by putting age verification chips in vaping devices, providing information on addiction and were making labels not attractive to children.
Chinese products had flooded the opening in the market provided by them obeying the law and that these were the products that were responsible for youth attraction issues with flavors, colors and youth-aimed enticements such as cartoon like imagery as well as features such as gaming capabilities on devices. He told Senator Moody that he promised to “wipe them out”.
Despite being a complete misreading of the nicotine alternatives history – and almost certainly being a ‘barn door shut after the horse has already bolted’ sort of promise, it does at least show some favor for American vaping companies and a potential desire to address issues facing it in the future.
That marks something of a change from Kennedy Jr’s initial nomination hearings where vaping did not come directly come up. However, his potential use of an Alp nicotine pouch during the sessions did draw a few headlines and suggested the new secretary may have a sympathetic stance on nicotine alternatives.
But although the administration has not addressed the U.S. vaping regulatory situation through any means – such as the use of executive orders – it has taken other actions through those means that have had an impact on the industry.
This includes several orders trimming resources for government entities that have some impact on vaping and other nicotine alternatives – including the HHS, the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) itself and aspects of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) such as the Office on Smoking and Health (OSH). This has resulted in redundancy or resignation for myriad groups of former federal employees in these organizations up to and including the former head of the CTP, Brian King and – allegedly – the entirety of the OSH.
The impact of these actions will likely take some time to properly be felt. In the short term it presumably has increased the disorder and delay already present in organizations such as CTP that would have had primary responsibility for PMTA assessment. Further in the future the decisions could potentially benefit vaping and other nicotine alternatives – depending how important intervening steps turn out.
For example, significantly more will be revealed on the future direction of PMTA assessment by who becomes the next head of CTP. A new head and new staff could perhaps be more efficient in assessing and processing PMTAs – though it is hard to see where new staff with the requisite expertise will suddenly materialize from. Similarly, much will be implied about the administration’s opinion of, and the potential future of, nicotine alternatives by what is done with the former activities of the OSH. For example, maintaining the collection and publication of smoking-related datasets but dropping things like preferential access to data or provision of OSH opinions on issues could create a more vaping-amenable atmosphere in the U.S..
Setting that aside, more immediately, the action taken through executive orders that has had the most impact on vaping and other nicotine alternatives has been the imposition of tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. from China. Primarily this has affected vaping hardware – though has also had an impact on other product which rely on specialist or mass-produced items that are hard to find from other sources at economically viable prices.
Theoretically this activity could be considered taking action against the proliferation of illicit Chinese vaping products on the market – as promised by Kennedy Jr and Makary. There is some evidence this is happening with reports of limits placed on maximum purchase numbers for disposable vaping products from wholesalers and decreases in registered imports of vaping products from China.
Data from the FDA showed only 71 shipments this May, compared to 996 in January 2025, before the additional new Trump tariffs started to be announced. It also compares to the 1158 shipments recorded last May.
But without a viable domestic vaping manufacturing sector in the U.S., the move risks worsening public health. There previously was little evidence of other nicotine alternatives leaching numbers away from vaping. There is perhaps a little more of that – primarily through dual use driven by situational advantages. This, for example, could be using pouches in scenarios where more discretion is required. But primarily the trend appears to still be for dual or poly use of products rather than switching entirely.
If vaping products continue to be limited by supply constraints brought about by tariffs, this trend may increase, or people may instead choose to move back to conventional cigarettes. There is little evidence domestic vaping will be able to spring up to fulfil the need. A couple of companies have announced they were transferring manufacturing capacity to the U.S. Many more are moving capacity out of China to third-party countries partly at least to get around U.S. tariffs.
But there will be no major transference of vaping capacity to the US simply because of the continuing PMTA situation. No company will take the time, effort, and capital it would require setting up manufacturing in the U.S. with no guarantee the product would ever be approved to be sold on the domestic market.
Meanwhile it is also unclear whether there has definitely been a reduction in Chinese vaping imports. Several manufacturers were already in the process of moving vaping manufacturing capacity out of the Shenzhen region in China due to rising costs driven by competition. Tariffs will have accelerated that trend – though President Trump’s “Liberation Day” spread of tariffs will have gone some way to reducing the advantage such a move would gain in terms of exports to the USA.
But it has been noted that imports of vaping products from countries such as Indonesia have already outstripped their totals for the entirety of last year (3,139 thus far this year compared to 3,102 for all of 2024). And there remains significant speculation that the vast majority of Chinese vaping imports – particularly for disposable vaping products – do not enter the U.S. under the proper registration. U.S. officials have alleged that they are often deliberately labelled as products such as shoes to get around restraints. Though this claim has been repeated many more times than evidence backing it has been produced.
One potential support of vaping products entering the U.S. market through some means aside from in registered shipments is the 90% discrepancy between the reported value of Chinese vaping exports to the U.S. ($3.6bn for 2024) and Chinese vaping imports registered with U.S. authorities ($333m for the same time period).
So thus far there has not been much help for vaping in the first six months of the second Trump administration. But there is the potential of future promise. Appointments and reassignments for the OSH and – primarily – the CTP could theoretically change the approach to vaping regulation in America. Further policing of illicit vaping products entering the market could lead to domestic uptake – if PMTA conditions were first sorted. So not much for vaping or wider nicotine alternatives in the first six months. But perhaps the groundwork for something more to be built later.
