What Does Trump 2.0 Mean for Child Labor?

By Anya Bravin

As seen on AP News.

Over the past 100 years, the United States has gained a reputation for having an economy that survives without relying on child labor. Thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, children are no longer legally permitted to suffer through cruel working conditions. But with Donald Trump back in office, this all might change.

Project 2025, the work of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, is often referred to by Trump critics as a blueprint for the first year of his administration. Although Trump himself has at times disavowed the project and its controversial ideology, it seems that he is planning to act on Project 2025’s recommendations, as he has on issues ranging from redirecting federal funding to ending diversity initiatives. The next recommendation from Project 2025 that President Trump may follow would amend national standards to legalize the employment of children in dangerous environments, such as factories and food processing institutions.

Project 2025 states, “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.” The view of Project 2025’s authors seems to be that children would like the opportunity to work in dangerous occupations. But, as many critics have pointed out, when kids and teenagers are educated on the risks of working these jobs, how many of them are still going to want to volunteer? And even if some still did, why is the government encouraging them, instead of warning them against hurting themselves? If there are laws banning children from consuming alcohol and drugs while a minor, there should be policies that discourage other means of senseless and incessant harm for people the same age. And even with these allegations against the ideology of Project 2025, it is possible that it could come through and devastate a longstanding and highly regarded national policy.

As it turns out, there have been several questionable actions in the past that deal with the relaxation of nationwide child labor standards. And most of them were proposed by President Trump during his first term, from 2017 to 2021. One of his past goals was to make it easier for teens to work in nursing homes and operate dangerous patient lifts, devices that help move people who suffer from mobility issues. Before this, the rule allowed teens to help operate these lifts, but not to work them without adult supervision. If the regulation was changed so that teens could operate the lifts solo, that would not only have been dangerous for them, but also for the patients that the devices were relocating. But President Trump did still try to reverse the regulation. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful.

Another one of President Trump’s legal battles over child labor focused on trying to overturn the popular resolution passed during the Obama administration, which stated that children were not allowed to work on farms that used dangerous pesticides. This regulation was passed in part due to the fact that spending too much time around certain pesticides can permanently damage the neurological development of a child. Although the past Trump administration fought hard to have the working age on these farms lowered to include young teenagers, they ultimately failed in this battle as well, much to the relief of children’s health specialists across the country.

Although Trump himself might not have been the most successful in overturning long standing child labor standards on a federal level, various Republican lawmakers have been successful in doing the same work statewide. These new laws and regulations have contributed to a clear difference in child labor statistics around the country; from 2019 to 2025, the US has seen an 88% increase in child labor law violations. States like Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, and Florida are perfect examples of the reasons for this dramatic increase. These states have participated in a nationwide phenomenon of loosening laws dealing with things like work hours for children, age restrictions for the serving of alcohol, age restrictions for working in freezers, meat coolers and other dangerous locations, and the requirement of parental consent waivers for children to work.

Not only do these laws potentially endanger children’s health, they also hold the very real threat of endangering children’s academic pursuits. Research shows that kids who work long hours are more likely to let their grades slip and even to drop out of school than kids who either don’t have a job or who work fewer hours. It has notably been argued (one important example being in Project 2025) that children working in dangerous conditions for long hours is beneficial both to the children and the industries. However, the fact remains that kids who hold these kinds of jobs are more likely to be in danger of severe injury or death, and are held back from other important aspects of life – including their academic career. In addition to harming the individual, endangering the academic pursuits of young children and teens is extremely harmful to the country: Each class of high school dropouts costs our nation’s economy billions of dollars in unrecognized earnings.

It is clear that a rollback of child labor laws and guidelines is not, as Project 2025 states, going to be beneficial to any workers involved – especially not the children! Unfortunately, this is the place our country is in now. We are currently under the control of a president who, instead of spending time protecting children from real threats to their safety and well being in the workplace, is instead working on sheltering children from schools that are “pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” In other words, President Trump is ready to and has already begun to take drastic measures to shelter America’s children from a far left (“woke” as many MAGA Republicans refer to the ideology as) point of view. However, the fact that Trump has come out in full support of a legislative agenda working to loosen restrictions on children’s tangible lives and physical safety in the workplace shows that he and his supporters do not really care about protecting children from any real threats to their well being. When we are confronted with a leader who holds beliefs or opinions that seem extremely controversial to a huge segment of the people they govern, it is up to us—those people—to make sure that our beliefs are also reflected in the actions of those who are meant to make choices that benefit all their constituents. So, if you agree with me that Project 2025’s view of child labor is cruel and inhumane, help ensure that it does not become our nation’s reality. Become part of the effort that works to encourage government interaction in improving dangerous industries, not in making sure that they increase their profitability by expanding their workforce of teens and other underage workers. And although legislative victories are crucial, there are other ways to make a difference. Just purchasing an article of clothing from a reputable, equitable company or planting a garden so that you don’t have to rely on non-equitably derived supermarket produce can be hugely influential in helping to put an end to the abuse, mistreatment, and destruction of this world’s children.

NOTE: A thank you to Reid Maki and the Child Labor Coalition for the information presented in this article.