2025 Outlook: 10 Global Policy Trends to Watch

The past few years have been turbulent ones for many industries, thanks to a global pandemic, an increasingly contentious and complicated regulatory environment, supply chain volatility, global warming and climate uncertainty, complex sustainability mandates, and ambitious (and some would say unobtainable) environmental targets. However, with these challenges also comes great opportunity.

We surveyed analysts, researchers, industry insiders, attorneys, regulators, and others to provide insight on what trends to watch in 2025 and beyond for a series of regulatory and trend look ahead articles you will see over the next several days and weeks. In no particular order, here are 10 of the trending issues we identified, and you will see many of them examined in the other Look Ahead 2025 articles.

1. The Continuing Impact of PFAS: Legislation, Regulation, Litigation

When federal agencies in the U.S. were slow to act on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), many states stepped in to fill the void, regulating or banning the presence or use of PFAS in a variety of products ranging from firefighting foam to food packaging and hundreds of products in between. According to Safer States, as of August 2024, 30 states adopted 155 policies aimed at regulating or banning PFAS, while two additional states have introduced another 18 policies.