in effect
This is Executive Order 14255, signed March 31, 2025, and published in the Federal Register on April 3, 2025. It directs the federal government to create a new office to help large investors build projects in the United States by cutting through government red tape.
Within 30 days of the order, the Secretary of Commerce (working with the Treasury Secretary and the President’s Economic Policy adviser) must set up a new office inside the Department of Commerce called the United States Investment Accelerator. The office focuses on investments over $1 billion, and its job is to help investors move through federal regulatory processes, reduce regulatory burdens where the law allows, expand access to national resources, connect investors with national labs for research, and work with all 50 state governments to lower barriers to investment. The office will be run by an Executive Director with legal, transactional, and operational staff, and it will take over the existing CHIPS Program Office, with instructions to negotiate what the order calls better deals for taxpayers than the previous administration. The order states it must be carried out consistent with existing law and only when funding is available, and it creates no new legal rights that anyone can enforce in court.
Large domestic and foreign companies planning U.S. investments above $1 billion are the intended beneficiaries, along with semiconductor firms previously dealing with the CHIPS Program Office. The Department of Commerce, Treasury, national labs, and all 50 state governments are drawn into the process, since the new office is meant to coordinate with them to speed up permitting, site selection, and construction.