Amid a far-ranging push to deregulate American companies — from payday lenders to internet service providers — Trump has singled out Big Tobacco as the one industry he intends to crack down on.
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced it will push ahead with a plan to reduce nicotine in cigarettes. This week, the FDA said it also wants to take a closer look at menthol and other flavors that entice young people to try smoking.
Not why would a federal agency charged with keeping Americans safe go after cigarettes — under normal circumstances, the answer to that would be obvious.
Rather, why would this most regulation-hating of Republican administrations seek to impose new rules on an industry that is one of the Republican Party's most generous donors?
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Tobacco contributed more than $5 million to politicians during the 2016 election cycle. Of that total, 84% went to Republicans.
I spoke with a number of experts who track the doings of the tobacco industry, and they too are scratching their heads. But one theory making the rounds is that our businessman in chief may be pulling a fast one.
By that thinking, Trump is publicly signaling a willingness to go after tobacco companies.
But in private, his relationship with the industry is very much nudge-nudge, wink-wink, with an understanding that tobacco firms will enjoy a free hand on what matters most to them: developing a lucrative market for electronic cigarettes as consumption of traditional cigarettes declines.
"That's a very real scenario, but not the only scenario," said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and an influential figure in the cigarette arena since his days with the Federal Trade Commission in the early 1980s. "There is every reason to be skeptical, but there are also strong indications the FDA is sincere and serious."
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb last week unveiled an "advance notice of proposed rulemaking" that is the first of numerous steps in a regulatory process that could last years. The goal, he said, is to "explore a product standard to lower nicotine in cigarettes to minimally or non-addictive levels."
This week he said that "we must give serious consideration to the ways in which we might further address flavors in combustible tobacco products like menthol in cigarettes and the fruit- and candy-flavored little cigars and cigarillos."
Those are impressive objectives considering they're direct assaults on the $130-billion U.S. tobacco industry, which, along with all that money showered on Republican lawmakers, donated $1.5 million to Trump's inauguration festivities.
"The strong statements from Commissioner Gottlieb are a very encouraging sign, but such a strong regulatory move would go against the overall anti-regulatory tone of the Trump administration," said Micah Berman, a professor of law and public health at Ohio State University.
"The FDA seems committed to this approach," he told me, "but the tobacco industry will heavily lobby to shut it down."
One hint as to how all this could play out might be gleaned from the order of the FDA's announcements. First nicotine. Then flavorings, which in the eyes of the public now could be seen as an equally important health hazard.
They're not. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about a quarter of cigarettes sold in this country are mentholated.
The FDA is right to target tobacco flavorings as a gateway for young people to take up the habit. But, pardon the expression, it may be just a smokescreen.
Nicotine is the whole ballgame. Tobacco companies have known since at least the 1960s that nicotine addiction is central to their business.
Ask agency officials why it took so long to get the rule-making process up and running, and they'll tell you it's taken years for the science to catch up with conventional wisdom. They'll say sufficient data finally exist to proceed with potential limits on nicotine.
An FDA spokesman steered me to Gottlieb's official statement, in which he noted that tobacco kills more than 480,000 Americans every year and costs nearly $300 billion annually in healthcare expenses and lost productivity.
"In fact," he said, "cigarettes are the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users."
Murray Garnick, the company's executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement that "any proposed nicotine standard would need to be part of a comprehensive package which also includes steps to encourage the innovation of less harmful products."
The tit for tat, then, would be the tobacco industry's forestalling litigation on nicotine limits as long as the FDA keeps its distance from vaping.
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