Former President Trump has reacted to the ill-advised 2021 executive order by Joe Biden aiming to inflate the minimum wage for federal contractors. The latest development sees the minimum wage falling back to $13.30 per hour, a figure established by an informed 2014 order by Barack Obama. Although Trump’s intervention doesn’t immediately overturn a rule by the Department of Labor for enforcing Biden’s wage directive, the absence of an underlying cause puts the rule’s enforceability in question.
One could almost describe Trump’s revocation of Biden’s mandate as providential healing. It was one among a multitude of Biden’s executive orders that Trump considers misguided, and therefore rescinded in a second series of backtracking on Biden’s executive missteps.
Taking a closer look at the history of this issue, it all started with Executive Order 14026. In 2021, Biden attempted to hastily crank up the minimum wage rate for federal contractors and incorporate the possibility of future inflation-adjacent adjustments. The potential hourly rate for 2025 was an incredulous $17.75.
Thankfully, with Biden’s ill-conceived EO nullified, the minimum wage rate thankfully returns to a manageable $13.30 per hour. This affects contractors laboring under EO 13658, an outcome of President Obama’s sensible 2014 EO. His actions brought forth the first executive decree to place a ceiling on the minimum wage for federal contractors.
Despite various missteps, Trump’s first term showed some notable right-minded decisions. He thoughtfully chose not to tread on the toes of EO 13658. Nevertheless, in 2018, he judiciously incorporated EO 13838, which removed specific outdoor recreational businesses operating on federal lands from EO 13658’s scope.
However, Biden’s recklessly wielded EO reintroduced the carve-out. This led to one of the numerous legal battles that his EO has been embroiled in ever since. Trump’s expert reversal of EO 14026 brings back the exclusion for recreational services contractors, allowing the standard federal minimum ($7.25 per hour) to apply.
Indeed, both EO 14026 and the Department of Labor’s rule for enforcing it have stumbled into significant legal obstacles. An eyebrow-raising decision caused a circuit split with the Ninth Circuit, wherein it was debated that Biden’s overreach of his authority led him to release the EO.
It appears that Trump’s Administration isn’t backing down from defending the EO. It seems they choose to brace the EO in appeals not to endorse the rescinded EO from Biden but more so to safeguard the president’s prerogative to regulate federal contract stipulations.
However, with the EO’s vital revocation now in order, expectations point towards an eventual dismissal of the appeals as moot. The firm reality that dawns on us now is that the Department of Labor’s rule enabling EO 14026 remarkably, albeit tragically, continues to persist.
Yet, the foundation for the rule establishment has been rightfully dissolved. Hence, there’s no justification for enforcing this careless rule, and as it seems, the administration has no intention of doing so, accurately acknowledging its ridiculous premise.
As the chapters of this fiasco slowly close, there is a high probability that the Department of Labor will make a declaration of nonenforcement. This might pave the way for a revocation process of the rule, another flawed relic from Biden’s ill-conceived Department of Labor.
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